Short answer: Build demand first. Raising your rates feels scary when you have plenty of open spots and few buyers. If you have eight open spots and 15 people ready to buy, you'll raise prices without blinking. Fill your pipeline from your contacts, referrals, past emails, social posts and a free webinar. Then charge new clients the new rate.
Today's lead story was about why raising your rates feels so hard. The fear usually isn't about the dollars. It's that you don't have enough people lined up to buy. A coach once made me find 50 prospects before a launch with only eight seats. I got there with my CRM, referrals, old emails, social posts and a webinar. Now I use AI to build that list in minutes. In the news, the Iran war and markets, March Madness brackets, the Oscars, and a big Nvidia keynote. The Idea Slam covered picking a simple CRM when HubSpot feels like too much, and telling good advice from a guru's sales pitch.
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
- Before you raise your rates, list at least 50 people who fit your ideal client and could buy what you're selling.
- Build that list from your contacts, referrals, past emails, people who engage with your posts, and sign-ups for a free webinar.
- Keep current clients at their contract rate if you want, and charge every new client your new price.
- Pick a CRM by first writing down what you need it to do now and where you want the business to go.
- Treat advice as a red flag if you can't act on it without paying for the next step or another call.
Questions this episode answers
How do I raise my prices without losing clients?
Build demand first. When more people want your product than you have room for, raising rates stops feeling risky. Losing one client just opens a spot someone else will fill. You can also keep current clients at their contract rate and charge new clients the higher price.
How do I find more leads for a new offer?
Pat's method starts with your CRM. Search it for people who match your ideal client, ask your network for referrals, and go back through past emails. Then post about the topic and note who engages, and run a free webinar. Together that got him to 50 leads.
What's the simplest CRM for a small business?
Start with what you need it to do. At minimum, a place for contacts, a link to your calendar, and email tracking with follow-ups. A spreadsheet can work when you're just starting, but think about where the business is headed and whether the price will jump as you grow.
How can I tell good business advice from a sales pitch?
Ask whether you can act on it without ever contacting that person again. Watch for advice that tells you what to do but not how. Also watch for advice that only points to their paid products or feels like step one of a program. Also skip advice from people who haven't done the thing themselves.
Worth quoting
We're afraid to raise our rates because we don't have a big enough demand for the product that we're selling.
Pat Miller on Businessing
If I said to you, you have eight units of inventory. You have 15 people in the pipeline, would you be scared to raise your rates? No, you wouldn't.
Pat Miller on Businessing
If you never drive that Ferrari past second gear, you're just wasting money and potential.
Pat Miller on Businessing
Can you begin to implement and move forward with the advice someone gave you without ever having to contact them again?
Pat Miller on Businessing
On the show
- Idea Slam question: One owner asked for a simpler, cheaper CRM because HubSpot feels like driving a Ferrari to the grocery store, and another asked how to tell good advice from a guru selling a course.
In this episode
- Iran war, markets and recession odds
- March Madness and the Oscars
- Raising rates is a demand problem
- How to find 50 leads before a launch
- What to do about current clients
- Nvidia's keynote and AI agents
- Idea Slam: picking a simple CRM
- Idea Slam: spotting bad business advice
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)
Full transcript
[Pre-show theme song removed]
And good morning. It is Monday, March 16th and. We are Businessing. This is Small Business' weekly show. I'm Pat Miller, the founder of the small business owners community and your host. Glad that you're here with us this morning. We are sponsored this morning by our friends at Gen Heads, so thanks to them for being a part of the show.
I'm gonna talk about what we're doing on the show here in a minute, but first, how was the weekend? You have a nice weekend. Isn't it nice just to come back to the office and sit down and be like, yeah, I had a weekend. Well, how was the weekend? Was it good? Did you get something good done? Did you relax at all or did you work on some projects?
Uh, around here in Wisconsin, we braced for a major league snow blizzard thing, and we are getting rocked this morning. I'm in Milwaukee and I'm not getting it that bad, but some parts of the state got feet. Of snow. So it's just kind of a snow day where we're just at home drinking tea, watching Businessing.
So I'm glad you're here. Here's what's on the show today. Gonna give you the latest from Iran. The March Madness Brackets are out. The Oscars were last night.
Who won? Who lost, and who cares? Maybe you don't. The AI story of the day is developing. Nvidia, the chipmaker, their CEO is giving a delivery today, a speech today that may change how AI works and the type of Ai AI that we use.
There's a hot rumor about what he's going to reveal, so I'll talk about that in the AI story of the day. Our lead story is all about raising your. Rates. If you're not raising your rates, you're not keeping place, uh, pace with inflation. And the thing I was thinking about is it's a hell of a lot easier to raise your rates when you're not worried about the money.
How can that be true? Well it is, and I'll share it with you during the lead story. Two idea slam questions today. One is all about CRMs. It comes directly from the small business owners community. Someone's using HubSpot, but it feels like they're driving a Ferrari to the grocery store, like it's way overpowered.
So what should I use? So we'll talk about CRMs and we'll talk about getting bad business advice. How do you know between good advice? Bad advice. Someone that's just trying to sell me something, how can I tell the difference? We'll talk about that in the Idea Slam. And of course, if you're with us this morning, take a minute to drop into the chat and tell us that you are here.
Theresa Wilmotts with us. Good morning friends. Thank you, Theresa. Drop the link to your design agency. Come on, let's get some promotion going on. And don't forget, sign up for the 2026 SBOC conference waiting list so you have a chance to get tickets when they go on sale on May 13th, because here's the drill, we have 200 tickets available for the conference.
75 of the tickets are already spoken for. That means we have 125 that are gonna go on sale on May 13th, but. The community, which is now at 160 some, they'll get a chance to buy tickets, and everybody on the wait list will get a chance to buy tickets before they go on sale to the public. So if you're not yet a community member joining our free, no obligation, no credit card, no weirdness.
Joining the wait list is your best chance to get in line for a conference ticket when they get on sale on May 13th. Let's get into the news. The US and Israel War with Iran is now in its third week, and a ceasefire is not in sight, although a ceasefire is starting to bubble up a little bit. Uh, president Trump says that Iran says, now this is Trump's saying.
Trump says Iran wants to make a deal, but Trump says the terms aren't good enough yet. So we'll, what is the, uh, joke phrase? The beatings will continue until morale improves. Sounds like that's what's going on, that we're just gonna keep on bombing them into submission If that ever comes, my gauge on the war continues to be following the money because the US has an amazing propaganda machine.Iran has an amazing propaganda machine. Then you've got all of the news channels.
One's coming from this side, one's coming from that side. So I don't know who to trust, so I've just determined you know who I'm gonna trust. I'm gonna trust the market. Why am I gonna trust the market? Because they have more at risk money.
They're voting with their dollars, and they will kind of guide me at least as to where. Uh, this whole thing is going. So the s and p 500 has fallen three weeks in a row, and as of this morning, the DAO is up 430 points, which is, which isn't too bad. And the s and p is up 71 as of this morning, and oil prices have gone down this morning at last check, right before I went on the air oil was down to $94 a barrel.
Which isn't low, but it's not 120, or like Iran said, they wanted to take it to 200. The other thing is prediction markets. I have a thing with prediction markets because prediction markets aren't real. Prediction markets like Calci and some of the other betting markets, you can go wager on what the outcome would be.
Now, on one hand they're pretty handy. 'cause again, people are voting with their dollars and you can see what people think. And on the other hand, it's just, it's not even an opinion poll, it's just people betting. But if we're gonna follow the money for the outcome of what's going on, or at least the best guess of what's going on, the prediction markets now say there's a 29% chance of a recession.
So what is that two in? Well, what is that? One in four? Uh, one in three almost are saying that there's a chance for a recession. So when you mix all of that up, the market's kind of, eh, gas or oil prices are higher than they should be. And a third of the folks are betting there's going to be a recession.
So not danger will Robinson territory yet. And if you're hashtag old enough. To understand that reference. You can be my friend. Uh, you can be my friend anyway, but you're extra cool if you get danger. Will Robinson. So we'll keep an eye on it 'cause I figured that that's the fair way to keep an eye on what's going on.
And yes, Abby Miller, good morning. Happy snow day everyone. Except if you live in the south and if you live in the south, we're very jealous. We're coming to see you 'cause we have snow up to our eyeballs. In the news yesterday as well. March madness Brackets are officially out just as it was predicted.
Duke is the number one overall seed after going 32 and two this season. The other four, number one, seeds, Arizona, Michigan, and Florida, round out the top floor. Four seeds. The favorite to win at all, however is not Duke. The betting odds are the best on Michigan right now. And what's cool about this is if you like to pay attention to college basketball and kind of not work so hard.
Tuesday they start the playin games, and then the full day of college basketball, goodness is Thursday and Friday, the national championship game, April 6th in Indianapolis. Let's talk about the Oscars. They happen, they happened, uh, last night and one battle after another. That film won best picture and swept six Oscars categories last night.
Michael B. Jordan won best actor. And that film also took home four awards. Jesse Buckley won best actress for Hamnet and Gwyneth Paltrow won for Marty Supreme. They also had a new category best achievement in casting. Conan was the host for the second year in a row, and there were some touching moments, including tributes to Rob Reiner and Robert Red Redford.
Now, here's what's interesting about the Oscars. I didn't watch Abby watched. She was out there watching it. I was in here playing with Claude, to be honest, and I was thinking about it, huh? Not only did I not see any of the movies that were nominated, I have not seen a movie in the theater in the last 12 months.
I thought to myself, that can't be true. That can't be true. You haven't been to a movie theater in 12 months. And then I thought, well, I went and saw the thing Pat. That was 24 months.
That was three years ago. That was before, like, I couldn't remember the last time I went to a theater to see a movie. It used to be.
10, 15 years ago. Oh, you know what? That's the one Oscar nominee I haven't seen. Let's go see it next weekend. And they would do like a film festival and you could go see all the Oscar nominees and get caught up. Heck, we used to have Oscars parties when I was in radio. It was awesome 'cause it was a big cultural thing.
But movie ha behavior has totally, completely changed. I think it's one of those cultural things that's really changed. What's changed more than that? Uh, good morning, Satyam. Thanks for tuning in.
Appreciate it, man. Listening to the radio has totally changed. Used to be a big deal. Now it's not. I thought of another one.
Going to the bank used to be a necessary thing or getting cash out of the ATM. Gotta have cash. Always gotta ca you don't have cash anymore. DoorDash and food delivery also a big change. Used to be only a pizza could get delivered to you, but now you can get literally anything delivered to your door.
Movie theaters, man. Remember how great it was to, doesn't that sound stupid to say out loud? You know what I like to do? Go to movie theaters. Do you go to movie theaters? No, I never go to movie theaters. Well, that's stupid.
Something I guess we should do more of for sure. Alright, good morning Steve. Thanks for tuning in as well. What A-S-B-O-C fam Lead Story Today is all about pricing. And I was thinking about raising rates because raising your rates is something we should all be doing. You need to be consistently raising your rates to make enough money in the business.
And I thought to myself, okay, how can we get people around the idea of raising their rates? And I thought, you know what? Raising your rates is a heck of a lot easier when you frame it this way. We are afraid to raise our rates, not because of the dollars we're asking for. We're afraid to raise our rates because we don't have a big enough demand for the product that we're selling.
It's not the money, it's the people in line needing the product. So let me ask you, have you wanted to raise your rates in the last year? Raise your hand. Okay. I should see.
I should see all the hands. I can see you. I don't. Okay. Thank you.
Yes. We all wanted to raise our rates, but you haven't done it yet.
Okay, so why haven't you, and this is what I hear when people say, I haven't raised my rates. Well, why haven't you raised your rates? Here's some things that could hold you up. Do you genuinely believe that your price isn't fair, that you're discharging way too much that can hold you back? Another thing that holds people back more often is, I would raise my rates, but I'm terrified of losing the clients I have.
Or the new clients that I hope to attract, they'll never say yes at a higher rate. So let's dig into that second issue. I don't know if people will say yes, if I raise my rates. That's where I think it's not a pricing problem, it's a demand problem. And when we talk about raising our rates. We seem to conveniently forget and ignore the fundamental rule of how much something costs supply and demand.
It's the concept that drives pricing and product availability in the United States and everywhere. Everywhere. There's a free market supply and demand when we set our price, but we have unlimited demand. I've got a ton of inventory. I'm sorry. When we set our price with unlimited demand, it can feel like we are pulling a price out of thin air because we are.
So I'm gonna set a price. I have a thousand widgets to sell. A thousand widgets are available, and I'm just gonna set a price form that I think that they're worth. That's how it is. Unlimited inventory.
So I'm gonna set a price for just an unlimited amount of,wow. The whole show crashed. My apologies for that. When you set your price with an unlimited amount of inventory, then you're just guessing at what your price can be. That's a problem.
But when you start to think about, okay, well what should I do next?
How can I raise my rates if I have an unlimited amount of inventory? That's where we have to get into driving demand. Driving demand is the transformation that we need to think about because when we have unlimited inventory with not enough demand, then we gotta think about our target audience and our ideal client and pitching and pricing and contract terms to try and come up with something that's palatable.
But if we take action on heating up our demand, things get a lot different. If I said to you, you have eight units of inventory. You have 15 people in the pipeline, would you be scared to raise your rates? No, you wouldn't. You'd raise them without blinking. You'd go, cool. Uh, yeah, I'm gonna raise my rates.
Why? Because I got 15 people standing here with their credit card out. So if you have demand on your available inventory, you can get into it. So let's go through some demand side. Tactics, some things you can do to get more people standing in line, which will then allow you to raise your rates sooner because you've got more people waiting to buy stuff from you.
So if you get more people in the pipeline, you can afford to lose a client if you decide to raise your rates. So one coach that I worked with long time ago, Erin Marcus, she's brilliant. When I was getting ready to launch something and I didn't have enough people in my funnel, she said, okay, before we do this, you need to identify 50 potential customers you can pitch this to.
I thought to myself, Aaron, my God, 50, I'll never find 50. Uh, you know what I did? I did, and she wanted 50 people in the funnel because the price we had set for the product was pretty aggressive. I only had eight seats. So if I got 50 people that have woken up to eight seats, then I could be more confident in charging more.
So here's what we did. We reviewed the database that I have, my CRM, and we looked for all of the matches in the ideal client profile. So that's the first thing is to begin your outreach saying, who do I already know that's in my database? The second thing that I would do. And I did is that I asked my network for referrals and I just said, Hey, listen, I'm launching this new thing.
Do you know anyone that needs it? Some people surface that way. Then I went through my past email communications. Good morning, Lisa. I went through my past email communications. Who have I already talked to about this topic, or who do I think might be a fit that I've already warmed up through? Email communication.
Then I started posting about the topic, just making posts about it on my social media inside the SBOC group, and then watch for who engaged. If you go out and say, I believe in X, and here's something you could learn about X and four or five people engaged with that post, those are leads. Those are people you can add to your 50 people stack.
Another thing I did is I held a webinar on the product saying, okay, we're gonna do topic. Let's do a free webinar to get people interested in topic. I'm gonna teach you this much about it. And everyone that registers and everyone that attends obviously is curious about learning about that thing. That will also drive the lead list.
All of that rolled up got me to 50 leads. And you know what? I ended up selling the product. Aaron was absolutely right and I was able to sell the product for what I wanted to sell it for because I heated up the demand for the product. So getting those people on your email list, getting more conversations going, starting out with a consistent push on the demand side, made the supply side even more valuable.
Today I do it just a little bit differently. I wanted to walk through the actual food group so you could see what it was. But today I just use Claude Cowork to be honest. And I did a test on it this morning just to see if it would work. You know, I'm launching the AI uh, installation group, this mastermind to help people install AI in their business.
So I use that as the test. So I went to Claude and said, listen, I need to generate 25 more leads for the AI Mastermind group search, my email, my database, my SBOC community, my newsletter, the people that are engaging with me on social and generate a list. And it did. About 10 minutes later, I not only had a list, I had a list scored by their interest signals.
I could see who they were and how much they've talked to me about the topic of AI installation in their business. Pretty interesting. So when you have demand side pressure, you could begin confidently raising your rates. And if you wanna have higher rates, you gotta heat up the demand side. One last question that I get on this all the time.
All the time. I wanna raise my rates, but I've already got six clients. What do I do about the clients I have? I mean, you could go to them and say, Hey, rates are going up. Sorry. And it's easier to do that when you have a big line of demand waiting to take their slot, should they bomb out. But the thing I've always done is I've raised rates on new clients.
I've said, listen, I will honor the contract that we have, which is totally fine. And then just every new client that comes into the funnel is in at the new price. So raising your rates will help you make more money. It'll help you get to your Fridays off a heck of a lot faster, and it's the way that you can get paid what you deserve.
And this conversation, if you noticed, we didn't really talk about our brain. Oftentimes when we talk about raising rates, it gets all emotional. It gets, ooh, imposter syndrome. Ooh, I'm worried about pricing out of my own pocketbook and thoughts and feelings and all that gooey stuff. That's not what we're doing today.
This conversation was about what do I need to charge more? I need more customers that want it. 'cause when more customers want a thing, the thing is more valuable, very straightforward. So raise your rates. It's good for you, and do that. By driving demand. There's a big AI story that's building today, and we need to talk about it.
NVIDIA's Jensen, Wang. Wang. I think it's, I'm saying that right, Jensen. He's the guy, Nvidia. He's giving a keynote today at a big AI conference, and it's rumored that he's going to spill the beans on something that Nvidia has teased, but they really haven't released a lot of the details. There was a story that came out last week, kind of a tease that Nvidia was thinking about rolling out something called Nemo Claw Nemo, like the fish claw.
Let's go back for a second. A month ago, a guy launched a thing called Open Claw. Which would control Claude Cowork and Claude into an autonomous agent on your desktop working around the clock, and it would give you agentic team member automated power on your own desktop to automate almost anything that you can do with your computer.
And it took off. It went absolutely viral. The guy got so popular, open AI hired him. Now Nvidia is saying, listen, that clawing is kind of a cool idea. We might do Nemo claw and just to pause all this stuff. If all these claws and all these things and claws and all this stuff is just like, pat, what the hell are you talking about?
What I'm talking about is an AI powered team member. That works around the clock and does whatever you can do with a computer. Okay, the bucket, open, claw, Nemo, claw, whatever. Those are just the ways that we get to it. Clawed, cowork, scheduled tasks, perplexity, computer, it's all kind of the same thing.
Here's what makes this interesting. Open claw is really hard to install for the average person. There are some security risks that come with it, and the market has been kind of hungry for someone to come in, harden it and make it mass appeal, like bring it to the market at scale. Well, Nvidia can do this, but the interesting part is that Nvidia is a chip maker.
Nvidia is not an LLM. Nvidia is not Gemini. NVIDIA is not chat. GPT Nvidia makes the chips that runs all of those companies. What makes this so interesting is that if indeed Nvidia opens a Nemo Claw or some other autonomous team member that you can use, they're gonna be able to double dip. They're gonna be able to sell the infrastructure to all of the LLMs and power all of those businesses on their chips, but then also get into the software game and go direct to consumer.
To power all of these autonomous team members, adding a software layer to their hardware layer where they're already the kings of the hardware layer. Fascinating. Jenssen's talk is today at one o'clock, 11:00 AM Pacific, one o'clock central. So I'm gonna pay attention to it, obviously, 'cause I'm being an AI nerd for your behalf, and I will let you know what becomes of it.
The idea is this could be the Agentic autonomous team member we've been waiting for, that everyone can use real easy. There's one other AI story that I want to hit on today. I think we already taking these AI tools for granted. We are taking these AI tools for granted because they're getting so good.
We're losing touch with the idea. We're talking to a computer. This morning I was writing a proposal for a potential client and. Claude drafted it and it came back and I was giving Claude some direction. I said, you know, you were a little critical of the partner there. Uh, I don't wanna be that critical and that harsh on the partner.
So rewrite that paragraph and, you know, don't make it so critical of what they're doing. I mean, go ahead and sell that. We're gonna do great things, but, you know, don't rip on what they've been doing. And Claude came back and said, and this is the part that I think is we just need to remember how amazing this is.
It said something along the lines of, you know, you're right, we need to honor our partner's work, and this is a direct quote instead of dunking on it. And I thought that is so culturally in line with what someone would actually say, oh, come on, don't dunk on 'em. The chatbot said that, now I know it's just a computer, like scraping together a bunch of stuff, but that is a level of nuance.
It's almost like, uh, back in the day when video games went from eight bit to, to the all the extra bits that made 'em look more lifelike and feel more lifelike. It's a moment like that that makes me go, that's more lifelike. That makes it feel like I'm talking to a person. I know it's little, but a little thing like that just makes me go, yep, we're getting there.
We're absolutely getting there, and it will be very soon until it will feel exactly like we're talking to a real person idea. Slam image is on the way. We've got two questions we're gonna do today. One is about HubSpot. The question is, I've been using HubSpot for my contacts, but it feels like I'm driving a Ferrari to the grocery store.
I just need to track conversations and follow ups. What's the simplest CRM that won't cost me 50 bucks a month and won't take a week to learn? Now, that's a direct question coming out of the small business owner's community. I wanna address that and I'll share some of the responses that were given inside the community.
The other question. I got burned by bad business advice from a guru who made it sound so simple. How do I tell the difference between good advice and someone just trying to sell me their course? Does that sound familiar? We'll talk about that in today's idea Slam as well. But first, let's talk about A CRM Gen Ed.
Come on down. No, really they're the sponsor of the show. Gen Head powers my business. So let's just tell you about this awesome CRM Gen Head Scale Systems, not Chaos built for early stage businesses. Gen Head systems are designed for founders, solopreneurs, and lean teams who need real momentum, not complex tools that require a full-time operator.
It's streamlined, its practical, and it's easy to act on right away. The cool thing about Gen Head is it practically does. Everything. It connects 10 or more disconnected tools so you don't have to bounce from one screen to another. With your CRM and your social media automation and your content tools and your email outreach, it's, it's all there.
It centralizes your growth into one clear operating system, less chaos, clearer data, better execution. Get it now@genhead.com. That's gen head.com, gen head. Thanks for being a sponsor of the show. I really appreciate it.
We are gonna talk about the idea slam now. And don't forget the idea Slam is here for you when you run into a challenge or an opportunity in your business, and you could use a second opinion.That's what I'm here for. That's what the folks in the chat are here for. Bring us the thing that's holding you back or something you could use a second opinion on, and we'll talk about it on the show. You can either come on as a guest or you can send in your question anonymously.
Either way, we'll get you the feedback and perspective that you need to move your business forward.
Here comes question number one. Are you ready? Are you loose? Are you ready to go? I don't want you to pull a brain muscle.
Okay. I want your feedback in the in the chat. Okay. I've been using HubSpot for my contacts, but it feels like I'm driving a Ferrari to the grocery store. I just need to track con conversations and follow ups.
What's the simplest CRM that won't cost me 50 bucks a month and won't take a week to learn. Alright, good news. Bad news. Probably gonna be 50 bucks a month or more. There are some that are less expensive, so don't throw things at me, but it probably is gonna be more than 50 bucks a month. But all CRM discussions, all organization discussions, all AI delegation discussions, they begin with, what the heck are you trying to do?
You need to define what you need to get out of the software first, especially with CRMs. Are you trying to keep track of your past, current and potential customers? Do you want it to feel like a living contact list? What level of tracking and sophistication is good enough for you? Some of these CRMs, boy, you can track every time a touch, uh, a customer touches your business and you can automate responses to them when they do.
But the thing is about buying a CRM, as you mentioned, a Ferrari to the grocery store. It's only as good as what you choose to do with it. HubSpot is an absolute Ferrari. They've got features upon features upon features that you can keep on adding to the business, but if you never drive that Ferrari past second gear, you're just wasting money and potential.
The other thing I gotta say about HubSpot, it's not expensive to get started, but ooh, boy does it get expensive. You wanna drive it past second gear. I don't recommend HubSpot. I don't. It's amazing technology, but as soon as you start building a real lead list and start doing some amazing things with it, it gets really pricey.
So if you're gonna be a big boy or big girl company someday, go on HubSpot. It's, it's a monster. But if you're a solo op operator that has, you know, a couple of clients, a couple hundred people in your database, it is overkill for now. So what do you need out of your CRM? Here's how I would position it. You need something to collect all of your contacts.
Place to find your contacts. What's Lisa Rebel's phone number? Boom. Gonna find Lisa Rebel's Phone number you need to have someplace that you can track your time, meaning. I need to have a meeting with someone. Here's my calendar, and it interacts with your actual calendar. So contact, control, calendar control.
And I also really think you need to have email tracking and follow ups. You need to be able to know who opened your email and being able to reply to them when they do. Now, where it starts to get fancy is sales funnel management, content distribution. Social media posting, texting your clients, updating your website, updating your blogs.
Gen Head does all that stuff for me, by the way, but that's where it goes beyond the basics. But if you're just starting inside the SBOC community, Claire Lauer made the comment, just use a spreadsheet. And look Nikki's in the comments right here. If you're only looking for a CRM to be a glorified Excel sheet, I would really challenge you to consider what your long-term goals are for the business, and choose a system that will scale to your dream.
Absolutely. Thank you, Nikki. Appreciate it. So that's what we need to think about. What is the long-term vision, but if you are just starting a spreadsheet is good enough. Some other ideas, I mentioned gen head, but another idea, a friend of mine uses Zoho and is all in on the Zoho ecosystem, that it's affordable and has a bunch of different tools.
So that's another system you might be able to look out. Another one is Keap, KEAP. Keep sponsoring a community members event. That's how I learned about it. So thank you Wendy Babcock for turning me on to that. And Abby's got a few here in the chat as well. HoneyBook and 17 hats depends on their needs of A CRM, but those are two of the more affordable CRMs that are out there as well.
So knowing which CRM to get is a combination of what are you gonna do with it? How long are you gonna use it? How big are you going to get? Need to understand all of that stuff. Okay.
Wow, Steve, thanks a lot, man. I had a demo of Gen Head today and I was surprised by the breadth of the platform. This is the best you described it.
Thank you. Well, it's my pleasure Steve. Thanks for checking out Gen Head. It's a hell of a tool and they've got agents baked into gen head, like where they're going with automation is unbelievable. So hopefully that's helping you. If you're curious about A CRM, you need to know where you're going and what you need and buy accordingly and understand.
Just because it's cheap now doesn't mean it'll be cheap later. Don't buy something that's gonna inflate and keep those tools you need behind some crazy expensive paywall, and then you're gonna be in a bad spot. Second idea, slam question of the day. I got burned by bad business advice from a guru who made it sound so simple.
How do I tell the difference between good advice and bad advice? Someone that's just trying to sell me their course. Alright, raise your hand if you got sucked in by a guru before me. My name's Pat Miller and I got sucked in by a guru. Hi Pat.
It's happened to all of us. It has, I. So that's the first thing to know.
It's happened to all of us, and sometimes their promises sound too good to be true, and we get in. So how can you tell if you're getting good advice or bad advice? Here's the first question to ask. Can you begin to implement and move forward with the advice someone gave you without ever having to contact them again?
Here's a worksheet. Here's the actual tool or. Go take these first steps and we'll talk again in two weeks. Red flag. Red flag.
Are they suggesting books or videos that they've actually recorded? You know, I've seen that problem before. So here's the book that I wrote and here are three videos for me. That means there's more coming, that those are warning signs and sometimes they're not warning signs.
Some coaches just have stuff standing by and they're ready to give you things, and that's really cool. But if we're looking for instincts, instinctual, does their advice feel like step one of their ongoing work? Well, I'm glad we had this call today. Why don't you try this and look why have a call in two weeks and we'll continue the conversation.
Okay. The other thing to listen for is if the advice is given completely. When someone is selling you the solution, it will get you to a point, but it won't get you all the way there. It'll seem like there's a critical piece that's missing, like I understand the concept and I can start acting on it, but I can't actually complete the task because you didn't tell me the whole thing.
Here's another thing, when coaches are pricing their stuff. They will frequently say in coaches, I'm sorry, I'm saying this out loud in front of everybody, but it's true. Show them what to do but not how to do it. I've done that before. Almost all the coaches have done that before. So you go to a webinar that will say, here's how your CEO should or SEO should look.
Okay, cool. Then you go to implement the SEO and you realize you don't know how to do it. The coach will show sell you on how to do it. You know enough of what it should look like, but you can't execute it.
So if you have advice and it's the what, but not the how you might be getting Guru, can we make that a t-shirt? Another T-shirt. I got Guru. That should be a T-shirt. We need that.
I got Guru what needs to happen without the how? I got guru. Abby's also sharing a good one. Are they teaching someone else's content?
That could be a red flag. Good thought on that. Abby, if they're looming for a follow follow up call, I got Guru. You shouldn't have to make an investment to get started. If there's actual advice, if someone's really trying to help you, then you shouldn't have to pay. And you've probably received some quality guidance from a well-meaning contributor.
That's awesome. That's what you're looking for. But if you get some feedback that is, that isn't complete or it feels like it's step one of an ongoing program, those are some of the warning signs that you could get Guru. So watch out for that. The other thing that I will share, share. Is, don't take advice from people that haven't done what you, they're you're asking to do.
Hey, I want to go to Toledo. Cool. Have you been to Toledo? No, but I can get you to Toledo. Red flag.
Red flag. If they're not currently in Toledo or they're, they've been there now, they can guide you. Red flag. Those are some of the ideas Slam questions of the day today. So when are you going to come on the show so we can talk about your thing?
What's the big challenge or opportunity in the business? You can either click the QR code and come on the screen with me as a guest so we can talk all about your business and get feedback, or you can send in your question anonymously and I would love to feature it there as well. Alright, I did something this weekend.
I wanna show you. I did something this weekend. I built a calculator for the community that I'm actually kind of excited about that I wanna show you about. It shows the cost of building your business all by yourself. Can we do that? Can I, I wanna show you this thing 'cause I kind of played with c Claude and I did it.
I'm kind of excited, so I wanna show it to you. Uh, but we'll do that after we talk about building with Claude and building your AI installation group. Now, this is the new community that I'm bringing together to capture the value for you during this AI revolution that we're in. Because the way we run our small businesses are going to radically change in the next few months.
There's a new development every day. What is Jensen gonna say? Uh, what's going on with open claw? Should I be using it? Should I be using perplexity computer?
What should I do? All of those questions are abounding. How do you know what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to? How do you know what the A players are doing and what you can do too?
Who's gonna explain all this stuff so you can actually put AI to work? That's why I'm hosting the new AI installation group. It's part education, part action, and it's designed to not only teach you what you need to know, but also help you install this stuff so you can start moving faster, automating your work, and getting more time to do what's important in your business.
This is a six month program and it's gonna make technology feel familiar by taking the members and putting them into a monthly mastermind meeting. So behind closed doors, we're gonna be able to ask all the questions that we'd be kind of scared to ask out in public. And I'm gonna be teaching what I'm learning and what I'm doing and what you are doing.
And then we're gonna have AI slams where the members will be able to do, show and tell with one another. We'll be able to show off what's working and what's not and get your problems solved. Just like a traditional idea slam, I'm gonna write the AI trends letter that will keep you up to date in the latest developments, and then you'll also get on-demand access to me when you get stuck.
So this program is gonna help you move faster, reduce expenses, create new revenue, and say on top of the biggest business shift. That we've seen in a long, long time. The six month program kicks off a week from Wednesday. Scan the QR code on the screen for more information and sign up. I'm excited. God, I'm so excited to teach this group.
It's gonna kick off here in just over a week, so if you want to move faster and soar higher, the AI installation group is for you. Now, I had my computer crash here just a minute ago, so I gotta pull this back up here on the screen. I spent all weekend building something. Let's see if I can pull it up here.
I bet. I spent all weekend with Claude building something, and this is where I think lead magnets are going is, let's see. I want this to be the big one. Do this. There we go.
Make that big. Perfect. You've heard me go on a tirade saying that traditional lead magnets are dead. People don't wanna learn how to do something.
They want something done for them. They wanna know what the value is of what they would get if they worked with you. So the game now when you're trying to get someone engaged with something that you're selling is to show them the benefit to, to give them an absolute, something concrete that shows what happens when they take action.
So I sat down with Claude and I talked to it about the small business owners community, and what my instinct is right now is that we say don't grow it alone all the time. Well, don't grow it alone. Used to mean support and isolation and loneliness when we started in 2020, but now I think it's more about how one decision can cost you a lot of money if you're making it all by yourself.
If you're making decisions alone, you are relying on your lack of experience. You're, you're relying on your bias, you, you're risking your blind spots. And the value of the small business owner's community is to be able to say, Hey, I've done that before. Don't do that. Don't get that CRM, it sucks, whatever it might be.
So when you are an entrepreneur, you can make better decisions that cost you less money. So I wanna show this thing to you 'cause I made this, Claude made it, I made this. We need to have a word for that. Claude made it, but I made it with Claude. So let's just pretend every month you make decisions that shape your business.
And I'm doing this as show and tell so you can see something that I built and I want you to start thinking about what you would build and I'm kind of excited about it. Alright. Every month you make decisions that shape your business. Pricing a project, hiring a contractor, launching an ad, firing a client.
What happens when those decisions are made by yourself without a second opinion? So what's your annual revenue? Let's just say it's 150,000, just for argument's sake. And do you have a team? Employees, contractors are freelancers.
Yes, I do. I have a team. Cool. Alright. Think about your last big business decision.
Hiring a contractor, running ads, adjusting prices, investing in a tool, taking on a new client. How much was at stake for that decision? Okay, well, the last big decision I made was a thousand dollars decision. Cool. Now, before you made that call, how sure were you that you were right? Now? That is a tricky question because this is where we're leaning on our instincts.
Sometimes I've never done this before and it may work and it may not work. It's maybe 30%. I thought I was making the right decision, or wow, I'm absolutely sure 95% that I was making the right decision. Let's say it was 70. I think I'm doing the right thing here, but I've never done it before, so you never know.
Cool. Here's the cost of building a loan. Your results. Based on your answers, you said you were 70% confident. That means $450 of that decision was riding on gut instinct with no second opinion.
Research says most owners overestimate their confidence. The real exposure is likely higher. The cost of building a loan.
What if you got feedback on your big decision from an SBOC member and improved your decision making by just 15%? They showed you something that you were missing. They helped you adjust your pricing. You fired a client sooner on this one decision that 15% was worth $225. Which means if you joined the SBOC for $19 a month and did this one thing, you'd have a $2,400 or 2400% ROI.
If one decision in one month can help you with 15% better performance, you're gonna save more than a year's worth of SBOC payments, where an owner's only community, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, join the SBOC and you click that and you join. Now, why did I share this? Why did I create it? I created it because people ask me all the time, what do I get when I join the small business owners community?
And I can talk about how you have people around you and you get support and collaboration, and you feel like you're not alone. But that's not ROI. What is the ROI one important decision A year is made better. One more important decision a month is made better. What does that mean? ROI Wise. That's what it means.
2400% ROI. That's, that's significant. That's a lot. That's a lot of ROI. So I wanted to show that one, 'cause I'm excited and I'm gonna share it here on the show every once in a while. And if you wanna play with it, you can play with it right there. I just shared the link so that QR code goes now to the updated, uh oh.
Wait, no, it's this one. How much does it cost to build a loan? So if you wanna play with it and test it, shoot holes in it, tell me why it's bad, please do it. Help me make it better. But I did that and I did it in Claude, and then Claude helped me, uh, go on to GitHub. I had never been on GitHub before. Helped me go to Netlify.
So it's hosted and helped me, made it, make it live, and told me step by step to do the whole thing. This is the kind of stuff we need to do now. So you need to think what is the product that I offer. How can I demonstrate the ROI of what we do? So when a prospect takes that quiz, they go, this is a no brainer.
It's $19 a month. It's 2000% ROI. Yes, I'm in. Think about what you do. You can do the same thing.
And building the software, these landing pages, these calculators, I did it in a couple of hours, not even hours, and it's done and it's out there. That's the power that we have now with this software. I wanted to show it to you.
Pretty excited. Speaking of the community, we had two more members join over the weekend. Ibrahim from Indianapolis and Raymond from Pittsburgh joined over the weekend. So gentlemen, welcome to the community. Excited that you are here.
All right. That's a wrap for Businessing today. I gotta go watch Jenssen's talk at one o'clock.
I appreciate you tuning in. We're sponsored as always by Gen Head. They're also producing the show, so thanks to the Gen Head team for their support. And don't forget, sign up for the 2026 conference wait list that we'll have a uh, chance. To get tickets when they go on sale on May 13th. And if you enjoyed the show, like it, leave us a comment and subscribe on YouTube is probably the best way to subscribe to the show, and you'll help us make this the new daily habit for small business owners.
We're doing the show every darn day, so that means we are back on the air tomorrow at 11:00 AM Central. I'm Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community. Did I say thanks for tuning in yet? See you right here tomorrow at 11. Take care.