Originally aired Thursday, February 26, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.
Short answer: You can work a four-day week by changing how you run the business, in six steps. Quit work that looks busy but doesn't pay. Delegate and automate everything but your core job. Hold firm boundaries. Sell one main product to one kind of client. Build a steady lead flow. Ask for money every day.
Today I laid out the six steps I used to take Fridays off, starting last July. Three are personal: strategic quitting, delegation and automation, and mindset and boundaries. Three are business: one hero product for one hero client, a steady lead engine, and asking for money every day while raising your rates. Your version might be working until noon every day. You get to pick. In the news, Nvidia's quarter measured in Chick-fil-As, a price war on GLP-1 drugs, and bad news about new car smell. The Idea Slam covered what to delegate first and last, and whether you need a local phone number after you move.
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
- Do a time audit of your calendar and cut the meetings, reports and habits that look productive but don't bring in money.
- Hand off any task you could record on a screen video, like first drafts, bookkeeping or social posts, to a person or an AI tool.
- Say no to requests that don't serve your plan, and watch for other people's false urgency landing on your plate.
- Pick one main product for one kind of client so your time, marketing and sales all point the same way.
- Ask someone for money every single day, because a business with a clear offer and daily sales asks is the one that lasts.
Questions this episode answers
How can I take Fridays off as a small business owner?
Pat's path has six steps. Quit busywork, delegate and automate, and set firm boundaries. Then narrow to one main offer and client, build a lead flow you track, and ask for money every day. Your business can stay open on Friday even when you're not working.
What should I delegate first in my small business?
Start with keyboard tasks. If you can record a screen video of yourself doing it, someone else or an AI tool can probably do it. Filing receipts, first drafts of proposals, social media and bookkeeping are common first handoffs.
What's the last thing a small business owner should delegate?
Usually sales. Nobody understands or cares about your business the way the founder does. Many owners only hand off sales once they need more sales activity than they can personally handle.
Do I need a local phone number if I move my business to another state?
If you call prospects or they call you, get a local area code where you serve customers. A missed call from an out-of-town number can hurt trust. If all your customers come through ads and never call, it matters less.
Worth quoting
Working five days a week is a choice that you're making, and that's the biggest aha moment of this whole thing.
Pat Miller on Businessing
You are on the planet to do one, maybe two things for your clients in your business. Everything else is an operational tax.
Pat Miller on Businessing
If you can shoot a Loom video while you do it. It's probably something that can be delegated.
Pat Miller on Businessing
It only matters who trusts you and wants the stuff you have to buy.
Pat Miller on Businessing
On the show
- Idea Slam question: Two questions: what should you delegate first and what comes last, and do you need a new local phone number if you move out of state but keep the business?
In this episode
- Nvidia's earnings measured in Chick-fil-As
- The GLP-1 drug price war
- How to take a three-day weekend every week
- Steps 1 to 3: quit, delegate, set boundaries
- Steps 4 to 6: one offer, leads, ask for money
- Idea Slam: what to delegate first and last
- Idea Slam: do I need a local phone number after I move?
- Email apnea: are you breathing?
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 Thursday, February 26th and we. Our businessing, this is Small Business' weekly show. I'm your host, pat Miller, founder of the small business owners community, and we are sponsored this morning by Gen Head and our friends at nng. Are you with us this morning?
Can you give us a good morning in the chat? I wanna know who's here to have a good time because this is. The last day of the work week. Oh, yes, friends, we don't work on Fridays, and if you still work on Fridays, hopefully today's show is gonna help you get even closer to not working on Fridays, because I realized yesterday, I say I'm the Fridays off guy all the time, but I've never shared with you like how you can be too.
I thought, well, that's kind of selfish. I, I gotta give that up. I gotta tell you how you can do it. And then I was thinking this is a particularly good day to do it as well, because this is not just a normal last day of the work week. Oh, nay, nay.
Oh, nay, nay, nay. Freaking nay. Today is the last day of the work week prior to this weekend's Las Vegas trip, bro, bro.
Yeah. Vegas baby. So how are you today, Uhhuh? Yeah, that's great. Ask me how I am.
I'm great because I'm going to Vegas this weekend and, and like the wise man once said, I'm, I'm doing all right. I'm getting good grades. The future's so bright. I gotta wear what's on the show today, pat. Big Wall Street quarterly report was hit and uh, it really rocked the stock market and the economy and it was positive, so that's good.
The money that this company is making is so massive. I have to put it into perspective for all of us to understand. There's also a war on drugs for clarity. There's a price war on drugs, and this drug is so commonplace. It affects someone, you know, I guarantee it. We will talk about Fridays off and how I can give you the answers to the test so you can start doing it as well, because I've been doing it since July and it has completely changed my life and my business, and I want you to get there too.
Two idea slam questions today. When delegating our stuff, what's like the first thing that we start delegating and what's the last thing that we can expect to delegate? I'll share that and a common question that was fielded inside the small business owner's community. It's a pretty simple one. I'm moving out of state, but I'm gonna continue running my business.
Do I need to update my phone number to a local, uh, area code? Simple question, little bit of a more complex answer. We will dive into that at that time for the idea slam now, if you're with us, drop into the chat who you are, what you do, and tell us what business you run. We'll feature it here on the show so we can all make more money together.
The headlines, wall Street is pretty much on the edge. Anytime one of these big technology companies has to report their quarterly numbers. Yesterday, Nvidia, the chip baker was set to release their Q4 earnings and all of Wall Street was like, did they do it yet? Did they do it yet? Did they, did they, did you hear?
Did they call it? Did it? That was all of Wall Street. Because these companies are so massive. If they're up, everyone's happy.
If they're down, the sky is falling. Well, Nvidia reported their Q4 earnings and their Q4 revenue, just the money they made in fourth quarter. $39 billion in a quarter, 39 billion in a quarter.
The numbers so big. I was trying to quantify it with how much money you'd make in a second and how much money you'd make in a day, and it, it still didn't give me a realistic unit of measure. So I decided to measure 39.9 $39.3 billion in units of Chick-fil-A with that much money. How many Chick-fil-A could you open?
And with $39 billion, you would have enough money to open over 800 Chick-fil-A a day. Blink, blink, blink, blink, 872 Chick-fil-A. A A day in 90 days, with that much money, you could open 78,000 Chick-fil-A Restaurants, which means every single town on Earth with more than 10,000 people would have their own Chick-fil-A.
That's a lot of Chick-fil-A. They'll all still be closed on Sunday. Even the $39 billion would not open them on Sunday, which is unfortunate 'cause that's when I find my Chick-fil-A cravings hit the hardest. Is it just me? This kind of illustrates why we are really a technology stock market right now. If Nvidia or Google or one of these giant companies totally messes the bed.
It would really be devastating. We could be in one of those bubbles and if we don't find a way to make money on AI with all of this investment and all of this revenue, like if the profit doesn't come, we may see the bubble of all bubbles. And now I want Chick-fil-A. I've been so good. I've been on this really good diet, but like.
Come on, Vegas is this weekend. Does it really matter? Really? Please give me permission, please. I'm hungry.
I'm hungry. Another piece of news, there is an unspoken war going on about an unspoken drug that everyone knows, someone that's hooked on it. So this is a war on drugs, but this is a business show. So we're not just talking about a war on drugs, we're talking about a.
Business war, a pricing war, and the drug that I'm talking about would be GLP ones. You know someone that's on a GLP one, right? Maybe you are on a GLP one, and if you or someone you know has taking GLP ones and you're losing weight and feeling better about yourself, God bless zero judgment coming from here.
Good for you. Anything that makes you feel better and get around the sun as a healthier person. High five. Uh, for real. There's no joke coming.
Good for you. These drugs are so prevalent. Everyone's on them, and now Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk or whoever they are, they're all starting to fight with one another.
They're starting to drop their pricing. So Eli Lilly has dropped the price of their Zep bound in the last year from over a thousand dollars a month to $300 a month. So they've gone down 72%. That sounds like a lot. Meanwhile, wegovy and Ozempic. They continue to cut their prices. It's now according to the story I read and, and results may vary, but according to the study I read, or story rather, 1 99 a month for new patients.
So these two drug companies are fighting with one another because the drugs are so commonplace. How commonplace one in eight Americans are taking one of these drugs now. So you know someone that's taking them and maybe you do. 22%. One in five say they want to take one. So that's where the story's going.
As these two big companies compete, what did we learn about economics? Competition drives down cost. Competition is good for consumers, and as these two mega companies are fighting one another for the GLP ones, the price keeps on coming down. Meanwhile, one in five Americans, that's a lot of Americans, one in five Americans wants to take this drug.
So the demand is there and the cost is coming down. And the before and after photos I've seen from some people are like, whoa, wow. 30, 40, 50 pounds. Holy cow. Good for you. So if you wanna take one of these drugs, know that it's getting cheaper. If you are taking one of these drugs, know that the price is coming down and it's something that we should keep our eye on and it's a good Remi.
A reminder that competition is good. Competition improves our choices. Competition works. Okay. Becoming an adult just ruins things.
There's one last news story I wanna share. When we were a kid, life was magical and life was a magical 'cause. We, we didn't know anything. We were dumb. Remember being a kid and being dumb, some of us are an adult and dumb, but remember when you were a kid and just everything was just.
Oh yeah, the moon is made of cheese. Like we didn't care 'cause we were kids. It was just great being dumb and naive and innocent. But there's things about growing up that just kind of ruins it. 'cause like you learn how things work and you gotta become responsible and it's just like, damnit, I wish I could just be dumb and naive again.
I read a tweet this morning that just killed a little piece of me. Just another part of my innocence was taken. There's a guy that I follow, Dr. Mark Hyman on Twitter, and he's a wellness expert, all about getting healthy and he's a great follow and he teaches a lot of stuff about getting healthy and blah, blah, blah.But he tweeted something this morning that just killed a little bit of magic in my world and that magic is and and agree with me that this is magical. That magic is the new car smell.
Come on, do that. Seriously, take a breath, take a two. You can smell the new car smell. And when I say new car smell, don't you just get goose? Don't you know it's an experience like, Ooh, this is mine.
It's magical. It just feels like excitement and road trips in America and just, ah, new car smell. Damn. It's awesome.
So that piece of being innocent and just loving new car smell and just thinking, I love this thing. Please don't ruin it for me. And he did. He just took part of my joy away. Dr. Hyman tweeted this morning that the new car smell can come from Offgassing. Formaldehyde and flame retardants, the chemicals that are in the car.
And then he went on to say, oh yeah, and those chemicals are super bad for you. Brain toxicity conditions like a LS. Yeah. Is there nothing we can enjoy anymore? I'm willing to take that risk for new car smell.
How about you? I mean, it's new car smell. It's. That's awesome. So there are things that Dr.
Hyman says.
I'm like, oh, cool. Eat this kind of potatoes. That's helpful. Okay, great. Thanks.
Thanks, Dr. Hyman. And then there's part where it's like, bro, just go get a coffee or something. Just leave me alone. Like, just let me enjoy this one thing in this miserable, horrible place that we call Earth.
Can I just, just let me have Nucar smell please.
Our lead story today is a fun one. I was out last night at a Milwaukee Bucks game, friend of mine, Jeff McCarthy, high five. Jeff, thank you for the invite. And it's good to have friends like Jeff because Jeff is a big deal at a local bank and Jeff is a big deal at a local bank and he had sweet tickets and inside the suite we ink, we ate, we drank, and we were very merry.
It was epic. But I hadn't seen Jeff in a minute and he said, oh, you're talking about Fridays off now. Tell me all about that. In my head I thought, Hey, wait a minute. I talk about Fridays off all the time, and then it hit me. I'm calling myself the Fridays off guy, and on this show I've never kind of outlined how in the hell you can have Fridays off too.
I thought, well, that's rude. So today I want to give you the big picture. What am I talking about with Fridays off and how can I guide you to do it as well? This Fridays off concept came to me because I like to connect the disconnected, and I am obsessed with looking at what's coming next. I always wanna know, you know, how can we make more sense of what we have now and what will it mean in the future?
This is kind of how my brain works, and Fridays off is a read of the current situation that we're in. Then also a forecast on where we are going as entrepreneurs and professionals, and the headline is, we don't need to work five days a week any longer. We just don't need to do it. With a few small behavioral changes and a couple of changes in the business.
We can adapt to today's technology and we can change how we run our business just ever so slightly and adopt this kick butt new schedule three days off every week, a three day weekend, every weekend. And when you have a three day off, three day weekend every weekend. I will tell you from firsthand experience, and this is the technical term, it's freaking awesome.
I think that's in the study. Scientists found it's freaking awesome. 94% report. It is freaking awesome. The quality of life goes through the roof and this is totally within your reach.
And I know this 'cause I've been doing it since July of 25. So when I bring it up, here's what happens. Hey David, thanks for watching on Twitter.
David, great to see you. Hey David. You should take Fridays off almost every time people will say. Oh yeah, that must be nice. Boy, I'd love to get there.
Well, how about we just cut the junk, and I share with you the six steps that I took and I teach to help people get to Fridays. Off. Three of these steps are around personal behavior, primarily appear, and three of the steps are around business execution.
Here we go. First step, strategic, quitting. Strategic quitting. You start by saying, I am not going to work on the schedule that I was assigned any longer. Why do we work Monday through Fridays?
40 hour, 40 hours a week? We do that because at one point in our life, someone taught us to work that way. It's not human nature.
We weren't cavemen clocking in at 9 0 1 and clocking out at five 15. That's kind of the social contract of when working hours are, well, you run your own business. Why do you do that? You ever stop to think about that? Why do I work 40 hours a week?
'cause that's when my clients work. Okay, great. Do you do everything else your clients do too?
Or do you just do the work for your clients? We make this deal that we're no longer gonna work in the same box that everyone does, and to get out of that box, we need to do strategic quitting, which means we need to look through how we're spending all of our time, and we need to ruthlessly eliminate all of the performative work that looks productive on the outside, but it really isn't profitable.
This meeting could have been an email. This weekly check-in could happen once a month. This report that I write, nobody reads this service that I offer people that takes forever to put together isn't selling. We need to think about where we spend our time and cut everything out. That doesn't drive the business.
And when you do a time audit, like a real time audit. You start to discover stuff that you just take for granted and you do habitually, why do you start at 8:00 AM Because you do, why do you go till 6:00 PM Because you, because you do. Why do you go to local networking meetings if they don't give you leads?
'cause everyone else does question mark. And when you start looking at these strategic quitting items, it gets uncomfortable pretty quick. So you start taking a worksheet, I'm, I, I'm not sure if I need to do this. I'm not sure if I need to do this. You go through your recurring calendar and say, that's dumb, that's dumb, that's dumb.
And you start taking things out and you go, whoa, I have way more control of my time than I thought. Strategic quitting. That's where it starts. Now that you have a more wide open calendar, you start putting appointments on your calendar for you to do your work. Instead of stopping for that monthly lunch meeting that gets you no leads, you block out 11 to one 30 for you to eat a Turkey sandwich and then do 90 minutes of deep work on what's important to you that swing, that reclaimed productivity.
It's two hours of deep work. Well, there's half of a Friday already. You see where I'm going with this? Time audit, a stop doing worksheet and quick action with permission to quit the things that you're doing just because they're performative. That's pillar one. We just have to declare, I'm gonna do this differently.
Pillar two, when you hear me talk about this on the show all the time, is delegation and automation. You are on the planet to do one, maybe two things for your clients in your business. Everything else is an operational tax. In order to do this show, I need to send invoices to the sponsors. In order to do this show, I need to communicate on social media to let people know I'm gonna do the show in order to do the conference.
I need to negotiate with the caterer in the hotel, and I got all of this stuff. But am I the only person on the planet that can talk to the caterer? No. Am I the only person on the planet that can tell people on social media that I'm gonna do a show? No. Make a list of all the stuff that gets done. But you don't have to be the one that does it Traditionally, that has been VAs and contractors and employees, but now more and more, and this is the thing you hear me talking about, it's all about AI and AI agents.
It's all about automation, and it's all about finding the repeating junk that you must do and stop doing it. Step one is to quit all the things that aren't serving you quit. Two is to quit all the things that anybody else can do and do only the stuff that you can do. Get everything off your plate except the thing that makes you you.
And when you do that, your work gets so much better. I ask people the question, where's my magic wand? Let's say, this is my magic wand. Hey, here's my magic wand. If you went like this, boop, and you only had to do one thing, what would that do? Like what would be the thing that you would do? Oh, I'd host Businessing with Pat Miller.
Cool. What if everything else was handled for you? What would your business be like? The show would be great because I could do, uh, more interviews and I could prep better and I could think deeper about the content I'm gonna present, and I could do an extra five o'clock show if I wanted to, and I could.
And I could, and I could, and I could, and I could now do the same thing for yourself. Boop, what are you on the planet to do? What if that's the only thing you had to do, how much better is your business? How much more money would you make if you only had to do that one thing? It is. So within our reach right now, contractors, employees, technology, automation and delegation, strategic quitting automation and delegation, those two things have to happen.
When you make those kinds of changes, here comes your big old melon to screw it up, pillar number three, mindset. Boundaries. This is where people get derailed. We can sit here on a show and daydream how great it is to quit all those meetings that annoy you and how awesome it is to control your calendar and say no to people you don't wanna hang out with.
And we can sit here and say how great it is to delegate everything but what you're the best in the world at. But then you're left with a lot of quiet time. This is where mindset and boundaries will get you because you'll start to wonder, did I make the right decision and is it okay that I left that networking group or that mastermind that doesn't serve me?
And who am I to be just a broadcaster that just hosts this show and has people do all the other stuff? Yeah, I probably should go out to lunch with that person that never really pays off, and they just complain for an hour and they drag me down. I, I, you know, all of the things. That will suddenly pop up as soon as you draw your boundaries.
Everyone's gonna want something from you as soon as you declare. I'm the host of Businessing with Pat Miller. As an aside, do you know how long it took me to feel confident saying that me, I was on the radio for 22 years when I went out to start my own business. Do you know how hard it was for me to own?
Saying my own name and proclaiming that I have something to share and I want to help people. I, I know what this feels like. I know what this feels like. These are these gremlins that are gonna pop up in your head where everyone's doing it, except you. And you need to build confidence, and you need to stand firm, and you need to say no because no is a complete sentence.
You need to recognize false urgency. You need to recognize other people's problems that are coming onto your plate. You need to get tough. And when people say hustle and grind, what they're really saying is be in control of what you're doing. Guide your results. Take control. That becomes a mental challenge at this point.
Strategically quit automation and delegation. Get mentally tough and clear and make the decision that this is how you're going to do it. Now. That is all personal lifestyley choices we get to make about who we are as a person that runs a business. That gets you halfway to Fridays off. The other half of Fridays off.
They're just a little more traditional business stuff. So if you're just joining us, I'm explaining how did I get to Fridays off, and how can you do so too? I really believe in this and I know that almost everybody watching can get there, but it's not easy and you have to take decisive action. So I've explained the three things you need to do mentally.
Now let's talk about the three things you need to do in the business to get there. I really believe in pillar number four, which is offer an audience clarity. Find one hero product for one hero client. What are you the best in the world at doing? And who are you going to do it for? Because if your, uh, product offering looks like a Cheesecake Factory menu, you're gonna have a little bit of your attention all over the place.
If you say, here's my product offering, I'm gonna host this show. I'm gonna reach as many people as I can. I'm gonna sell sponsorships on the show, and that's what we're gonna do. Talk amongst yourselves for a moment. I need to take a little drinky poop.
And that's how you know this is live. 'cause I would've edited that out before.
Excuse me anyway. Figure out who you're for, figure out what you're providing, and then generate a business that's going exact exactly after that. And this happens when you tighten your offer and go after the same people over and over. You get really good at finding ways to explain what you're doing and why you're doing it.
It also helps you become a real specialized player. And when you find a specialized area. You can go deeper on the products you're doing for them and the differentiation that you have. What is going on today? Excuse me. All of this stuff is really important and it narrows your focus. So now you're not all over the place with your schedule now.
You're not all over the place with the work that you're doing, and you're not all over the place with the products. You're providing. One product, one ideal client, become the best in the world at it. When that happens, just everything else gets simpler and all of these nagging products that really don't drive the bottom line anyway, you can just confidently walk away from them.
That's pillar four. Pillar five is understanding that we are in one business. I don't care what you do. I don't care if you're a travel agent. I don't care if you're a cupcake baker.
I don't care if you're a photographer. I don't care if you're a Chick-fil-A manager. I don't care what you do as a small business owner.
'cause we are all in one job. And that one job, say it with me, selling things. End of job description. What do you do? I sell things.
What happens if you don't? I go out of business. So if everyone's primary job is to sell things, because if things aren't sold, there is no business. Pillar number five really focuses on that business development and lead generation.
Where are your customers coming from? When we have one product and we have white space on our calendar to work on it, we go all in on building relationships and earning the trust that we need to set up your sales conversions. Who cares if you go to 82 networking events? Who cares if everybody knows you?
It only matters who trusts you and wants the stuff you have to buy. It's the only thing that matters. So we have to get clinical. We need to get vicious on building demand machines, things that put our name in front of the right people at the right time, and then we offer them ways for them to earn our trust and we can start growing together.
We build a repeatable path that works, this lead generation funnel that demonstrates who you are and what you do. That helps people learn to trust you more, so they're ready to buy something from you. It's the business of business. It could be organic, it could be advertising, it could be software that you're giving people.
I don't care what it is. You gotta track it and you gotta work it, and you gotta go out there and do it like it's your job. Because guess what it is, as you've heard me say a long time, uh, when you're in small business, you eat what you kill. And if you're not out there hunting, you're gonna get hungry.
That's pillar number five. And then pillar number six, this is the capstone. This is the last one. When you do those first five and you get to number six. Yeah, this is really what unlocks it all.
Asking for money and raising your rates. Now, doesn't that sound funny? Like we've gone through all of this and it isn't until pillar six that I say, okay, yeah, great, so you gotta ask for money every day.
We just talked about sales and how important it is, but I bet if we had the truth serum, it's just you and me talking and I said. Every single day, do you ask someone for money? Almost none of you would say yes. We can make excuses. We can have beautiful to-do lists. We can have every excuse under the sun to not ask people for money.
We need to ask for money every day. We need to follow up every day. If your operating position as a small business owner is, I love everything about it, but asking people for money, I hate to break it to you. It won't be long until you're working for someone who loves asking people for money. You are not going to make it.
I'm sorry. You're not gonna make it. And I share it that way because I'm actually looking out for you. I don't want you to go 18 months, 24 months of not making it, racking up a bunch of debt and saying, I wish someone would've told me that sales is the most important thing. Hi, I'm Pat Miller. Sales is the most important thing.
Now, you can't say, you weren't told. You don't need to love it. You at least have to like it, and you at least have to do it every day. High ticket, low ticket. Don't care.
Hi, I'm Pat. Give me money every single day. Now, there style points, you'll get better at asking for money. You'll become more confident, you'll build better packages, you'll come up with better solutions.
You'll do all of that stuff. But if you show me a small business owner that has a very clear product that works their leads religiously, and every single day asks someone for a sale. I'll bet on that horse all day, those people are going to make it. The people that don't do that, they're gonna find a big pile of excuses and then they'll wonder why they're back working for somebody else.
It's critical. Those are the six questions. If you strategically quit the things that waste your time that you're doing, because it's performative business, if you delegate. Automate and take advantage of all the ways you can narrow what you do every single day. If you can fight what's going on in your head and find the confidence to tell people no and the courage to do what you believe to make this business dream come true.
You've got half the battle won. If you can turn your back on the distracting products and the things that you think you could and should do for the thing you must do for the person you must serve. If you can leave the cave and go to the online events and get to know the people where they are, give them reasons to trust you and show them that you know what you're talking about.
And then if every single day. You can ask them for money and consistently raise your rates. If you do those six things, you too can have Fridays off. When you lay it out that way, it's like, yeah, that makes sense. I can see how if someone did all those things, they can have Friday off. Well, would you like a three day weekend every single weekend?
There it is. That's it. Well, isn't there some whizzbang technology or something like some secret? No. The secret is do you have the balls to do it
because not everybody does. That's the secret.
How can I help you with that? I think part of it's, I can help you with the show. I can come on here every day and be your companion and be here when things get hard and help you when you get stuck and look in the camera, as you know. Hopefully you're getting the vibe I like to do. Did you do the thing yet?
Just that little poke of productivity and accountability. Hey, did you, did you ask for money yet today, friend? That's one way I think I can help. Inside the SBOC, we talk about it all the time. Small business owners, community small business community.com, we're always talking about productivity and asking for sales and asking for referrals, and focusing your opportunities and quitting unproductive things.
I've thought about doing masterminds and workshops, but I haven't gotten that far yet. People are interested. Let me know. I'd love to lead a group on this as haven't done it yet, and supposedly I'm working on a book. Tying all of this together with stories of people that have done it and ways that I've done it and the before and after and all of that.
I just haven't gotten that far. But I believe in this. It's changed my life and I, it can absolutely work for you as well, because working five days a week is a choice that you're making, and that's the biggest aha moment of this whole thing. Why do you work five days a week? Because. Pat, I have a store.
Great. That's what employees are for. But Pat, I'm not making enough money. Cool. Let's work the process. So you are, just because you are off on Friday doesn't mean your business is closed on Friday.
All of this stuff is possible. And the last thing I wanna share about this is Friday's off is absolutely just a metaphor. Okay. Lisa Raebel. I need a book.
I gave her a big noise when she was writing her book, trying to tell her that she should write a book. Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate that. But Fridays off is just a metaphor.
I take Fridays off because I like having a three day weekend, and it gives me that Thursday afternoon end of the work week feeling, and it gets me on the golf course on Fridays when there are fewer people on the golf course on Fridays. For you, your Fridays off might be to work until noon every day, and that's it.
You get to determine Fridays off is your def definition of this schedule you would like to keep in order to make enough money to have a kick butt lifestyle. It's up to you and the method is laid out right there. And if you want a hand, let me know. The idea slam is coming up two pretty straightforward questions today.
When delegating our stuff, I was just talking about delegating. When delegating our stuff, what's the first thing people delegate and what's the last thing that they delegate? And then another question that comes straight out of the SBOC. I'm moving out of state, but I'm gonna keep on running my business.
Do I need to use an updated phone number or can I keep the one that I have? We'll get into that in just a moment. Businessing is presented by our friends at Gen Head. We love the gen head. If you wanna scale your systems not chaos. You wanna make your life easier. If you want to use the technology and the AI agents I was talking about, gen Head is the place that you could do it.
It's for early stage businesses. For founders and solopreneurs and lean teams who want the momentum, but not another tool that someone has a full-time operator to drive. Everything's in one place. It's practical and easy to act on, and it connects all of your disconnected tools. Your CRMs, your communication pipelines, your funnels, it is all right there, all with data that you can collect and report.
It's one clear, easy to use operating system, less chaos and clearer data. Better execution comes when you get gen head.com as your CRM. It's gen head.com QR code and the link is right there. Thank you to Nikki and the team at Gen Head for being such outstanding partners. Let's talk about the Idea Slam.
Idea. Slam is our chance to brainstorm for your business, and there's two ways we can go about it. You can click the QR code and come on the show so we can give you some free promotion and dive into what your business is all about. Alison Verhalen was our guest yesterday and we had the chance to do an idea slam for her.
That was a lot of fun. So shout out to Alison for coming on, or you can scan the QR code and just ask a question. I need feedback. Like, help me figure this thing out. I need a second opinion.
You don't wanna come on the show, you just want the information. Great. Snap the QR code, drop your question, and I'd be happy to help you with that as well.
Our questions today are pretty straightforward, but uh, as you would imagine, I have something to say. First question, when delegating typically, what's the first thing people delegate? What's the last thing that they delegate? When you think about delegating and you're getting people help, like getting help from people to do the stuff that you're doing, the easiest to translate stuff.
I don't know. I was trying to think how to express this and I thought anything that that uses a keyboard, like keyboard tasks, they seem to be pretty easy to delegate. And another way to think about this is if you can shoot a Loom video while you do it. It's probably something that can be delegated. And to get really technical about it, if you can shoot a loom video of you doing it, Claude Cowork can do it for you.
Now, I'm just saying I'm not sponsored by Claude yet philanthropic, but I should be dammit. I'd love to work with those guys anyway. If you can do it on a computer, if you can do it on a screen, you can most likely delegate it. So what does that mean? That means filing receipts. Drafting proposals, really the first draft of almost anything.
A, a marketing site, a a website, uh, artwork, a first draft, and even just getting the first draft done of almost anything can save you 75% of the work. You can swoop in and sprinkle your little fairy dust on top of it or whatever you sprinkle on things crushed red pepper. God. Now I want pizza. I'm hungry.
Can you tell I'm hungry? God, I'm hungry. One of the things I delegated early on was social media management. 'cause I hate it with the passion of a thousand sons. That's why I use Enji and I have my director of ops drive Enji because I hate doing social media. So that's a way that something that happens on the screen can be given to someone else.
I also delegated my bookkeeping 'cause I hate bookkeeping with the passion of 2000 sons. That's a lot of sons by the way. So you delegate the stuff that you don't like to do and you delegate the stuff that can be easily handed off. Those are some of the things that get delegated quickly. And we get to now think not just about delegation.
We get to think about automation. Just this morning I sent up an automation with Claude Cowork, which is now gonna help me better monitor the engagement of all the people inside the small business owners' community. And if someone's kind of ghosting us, they haven't shown up in a couple of weeks, Claude's gonna catch it.
It's gonna help me reengage those members. Uh, automation is set up every week to help me with the first draft of my weekly newsletter. It's taking content from this show and stuff I've actually said, but it's starting the process so I can move a lot faster. So all of this stuff is happening. Delegation and automation, those are the first things that usually go as far as the last thing that people delegate.
I think for businesses like ours, it's probably sales. It's probably sales. Um, no one's gonna understand exactly what your business does, uh, like you do, and no one's gonna really care about sales as much as you do because when you are the founder of the company. You just care about it a different way and you're gonna fight in a different way.
And you may end up delegating sales when you get north of a million dollars, or you need more sales activity than you can personally handle. It will happen. But I think that's probably the last thing that you would delegate, is the sales effort of the organization. So start with the keyboard tasks, delegate everything till you're doing just what you're the best in the world at.
And then when you get to graduate and walk away from sales, you're probably cooking with gas, so congratulations on that idea. Slam question number two, I'm moving outta state, but I'm going to continue running my business. Do I need an updated phone number or can I keep the one that I have? This question came right out of the SBOC.
Someone is moving and they genuinely wanted to know, do I need to get a new phone number? And I think the answer's pretty straightforward on this one. If you acquire customers using your phone at all, I'm pretty sure you gotta have an area code that's in the same number of your service delivery. Now, technically, do you?
No. But if you're gonna call people and they get a missed call and it's from an area code in which they don't live, I think that's gonna make them. Not trust you as much. 'cause really when you're trying to do sales and you're trying to encourage people to do business with you, it's a building trust game.
And that's a bad, that's a bad first example. But if you acquire all your customers through ads, through Facebook ads or digital reach, they never talk to you on the phone, then maybe you don't need to do it. But if you're calling people at all. It's a simple fix. I think it builds trust. It's like a free space.
So I would say absolutely do that. It's a trust signal because if you have the choice between working with someone in town or someone who perceptually is 500 miles away, I think most people would prefer, uh, working with someone locally. What's cool about that question is that person that asked it didn't have to wait a couple of days till I addressed it on the show.
They got an answer, I think was within 90 minutes. They got an answer from asking that question inside the small business owners community. So if you're not a community member yet, and you have these kinds of questions, like, boy, I wonder what I should do about the thing. Stop guessing. Stop guessing.
Become a member of the show, become a member of the community. Rather, it's $19 to become a community member. Our 24 7 always on community of owners are working together right now to help one another become more successful. That's not even talking about the legal hotline and the bookkeeping hotline and the technology hotline.
Our live events inside the group, we do idea slams inside the group. Our coworking events, groups on fire man. Click the QR code to join or hit small business community.com if you want some more information now. Idea Slam Image. Hopefully you're gonna find some time to come on the show. I would love to talk about you and your business right in front of everybody on air.
It's really fun. I have one story left to share before Daddy's off to Vegas, one story, and it is a freaky one. It's one that when I share it with you, you will never unhear it. You know when someone tells you something, it's like, I'll never not see that. Now. It's one of those stories. I'll share that with you after we talk about our friends at Enji who helped me with my marketing because I hate marketing with the passion of a thousand sons.
That's correct. NG makes marketing. Easy. Even when things feel overwhelming or uncertain or busy, ENGIE has got your back. It's got an AI powered marketing engine that learns all about your business, plugs into all your tools, and puts your marketing plan almost on autopilot. Imagine having help. Knocking down your marketing plan created in your brand voice with graphics that look great 'cause it's plugging right into Canva and a social media scheduler so you can set it and forget it.
Then it will help you collect all of your KPIs so you know whether or not your marketing's working and you can do more of what works and less of what doesn't. NG is a terrific tool. It's so awesome. They gave us a hookup too, 14 day free trial to try it out. If you hate marketing with the passion of a thousand sons, you could just let it go.
Start using NG four free, a 14 day risk-free trial. Then your first two months are in a discount, and then it's only $29 a month. The software is bonkers. ng.co/s boc ng.co/s boc. Thank you, uh, NG team for being a part of what we're doing here on Businessing with Pat Miller. Final show or final, um, story of the show today.
And this is one of those you'll never, you'll never unsee. Have you heard of sleep apnea before? You know that condition where people are snoring and like they're snoring and like they kind of choke for a minute and they wake up even though they're still asleep. So they end up getting a really terrible night's sleep because their breathing gets interrupted and they have these micro moments where they're waking up and falling back asleep, waking up and falling back asleep.
30, 40, 50, 80 times a uh, an hour. And their sleep is trash. And when they get a mask or they get help, their life changes. Sleep apnea, there's another place that we are doing it and we're not realizing it, and it's not sleep apnea. It's email apnea. Same idea is happening in the middle of the workday. It turns out that when you are intensely focused on a task, your brain will switch off for a minute and some of our unconscious functions kind of pause so we can revert more power to the task at hand and in that state.
A lot of us unknowingly alter our breathing. This is, I can't believe this is true, but when I did the thing, I think they're right. Email apnea. So when you open your email, turns out, according to the study, 80% of the people that check their email. Slow down their breathing to the point that it's almost like an apnea.
Now, next time you open your email, I want you to think about, am I breathing? Am I breathing right now, or did I, you know what I mean? When you get a really important email, I will never not see that. Now, I will think about my breathing while opening my email for the rest of freaking time. This isn't just some little nugget, this golden nugget.
Ooh Vegas. No, this is a big deal because you know like when you get done with a workday and you're just so tired, like you're just wiped out. Well you're wiped out 'cause you haven't been breathing right all day. Or you get a stress headache. Oh God, my headache.
What? You're not getting any oxygen? My shoulders are all tight.
Yeah. 'cause you've been like this all day. So later on today, after the show, when you open your email, I want you to think about, am I breathing or do I have email apnea? Now? Isn't that crazy? I just hope, I so hope you remember that and maybe like tomorrow afternoon you think damnit pat, dammit. I, I actually, I want a t-shirt that just says, damn it, pat.
Wouldn't that be great? I'd love that. I wanna be that guy in your life. So when you open your email, breathe people. It's good for your brain, it's good for your bloodstream.
Alright, do you wanna know a little bit about the Vegas trip? Can I just tell you? Just can we just, you and me have a conversation for a second.
I don't know if you know this, so I guess you wouldn't otherwise. I'm pretty much obsessed with Las Vegas when I'm here. I am businessing to the max. I am here trying to grow the companies. I'm trying to help you grow.
It is a mental. Meet Grinder. I am always on. I'm looking at Twitter. I'm I, I'm writing things.
I'm always thinking about how I can give you an edge. I'm here every day podcasting at 11:00 AM leading the community, building the conference, like it is full on Boogie to help you make a winning business. And outside of the golf course. The only other place on the planet where I don't think about business is Las Vegas.
It's been a part of my family forever. My grandfather and I, when I was this big, my grandfather and I would sit there and play cards at my family gatherings when I was a kid. Back in the back room. The adults would play poker every Thanksgiving, every Christmas meeting, e Easter, whatever. So it's always been a part of my life and I started going as soon as I could.
As soon as I was 21, I started going and there's just a. Those of you that love Las Vegas, you know that freedom. That just that freedom. And it's not that you don't love everything that you do, and it's not that you don't wanna be a good dad and a good business partner and a good communicator and community leader.
But when you to go to Vegas as an adult, you just get to do what you wanna do. And sometimes I just wanna sit down and have a beer. I just wanna sit here and I wanna have a beer and I don't want to think. I just wanna be and going to Las Vegas, is that, so this weekend my dad, my brother-in-law and I are gonna take the very first flight out of, uh, Milwaukee Sunday morning and go out to Vegas for a couple of days.
And the agenda is, it's pretty detailed. It is. Find a machine that I can stick money in and flag down the cocktail waitress. End of agenda. Probably eat a bunch of food.
I shouldn't. It's probably on the agenda as well. But outside of that, I'm gonna go, like I tell people, put my brain on the charger for a couple of days and enjoy life.
So I'm excited to go out. Look, this is, this is it. I've even got, not only do I have dice from Circa, which is where we stay, 'cause anyone that Las Vegas is knows where do you stay? Is the question circa is our home base. But not only do I love to go VA go to Vegas so much, I keep circa craps dice, which is my game on my desk.
Not only do I do that, I have them set in the actual setting that I put on flying V when I throw dice. And I have it set as a hard eight on the back. Is this too much information? This is too much. I, you know what?
I don't care. It's my show and I love Las Vegas, so if you're vibing, great. Uh, I can't wait.
It's gonna be awesome. And yes, it's only a matter of time until we have, uh, an SBOC event in Las Vegas. Now that would be way, way too much fun. So do me a favor and wish me luck on the show next week. We're still gonna have something go up every day at 11:00 AM I've got some clips from the show that I'm gonna live stream Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of next week.
So you won't completely miss me. So no crying. I will be here, but I will be here, uh, in prerecorded fashion while I am someplace in Las Vegas doing things that will not be. Live broadcast. Thank you to our sponsors, Jen, uh, gen Head and Enji, for being a part of what we're doing. Thank you to the Gen Head team for being our producers as well.
And uh, yes, thank you Barbara for the well wishes. I really appreciate it and thank you, Lisa. I will remember to come back because the flight will, um. It's paid for. I guess I gotta come back. Uh, do me a favor. Before you get outta here, will you like the show and subscribe on whatever platform that you're watching on?
And if you'd be willing to share it with a friend, I would appreciate that as well. This is the Daily Habit for small business owners, businessing with Pat Miller. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll see you a week from Monday.
Take care.