How Do I Figure Out Who My Best Customers Are?

Originally aired Tuesday, April 7, 2026. Businessing is now a weekly show with a new episode every Monday.

Short answer: Draw four boxes. Put how much a customer pays you on one side and how long they stay on the other. Then place each product or service where it fits. The high-value, long-term box is where the money is, because you don't have to find new customers every day. Your low-cost, long-term offers build the trust that leads people there.

Today I started with a restaurant story. Restaurants long assumed big groups were their best customers, but new research says solo diners spend more per person. That got me thinking we might be wrong about our best customers too. So I walked through a pen-and-paper exercise: map what you sell by how much value it brings and how long customers stay. I also floated an idea about taking your best client to lunch with no phones allowed, and used the college basketball title game to talk about business fundamentals like broken website links and forgotten blogs. For the AI story, I shared new research on AI that uses a fraction of the energy.

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

• Draw a four-box grid with customer value on one side and time together on the other, then place every product you sell.
• Put more effort into the high-value, long-term relationships, since those customers don't need to be found again every day.
• Use low-cost, long-term offers like a newsletter or community to build trust that leads people to your bigger offers.
• Take your best client to lunch and ask both of you to leave your phones in the car.
• Click every link in your website header, footer and home page this week and fix anything broken or out of date.

Questions this episode answers

How do I know who my best customers are?

Map each product or service by how much value it brings and how long customers stay with you. Look at revenue, profit, the time it takes you, what it costs to get the customer, and how long they stick around. The high-value, long-term group is usually your best.

How do I get more high-value, long-term clients?

Put steady effort into the offers that build trust over time, like a newsletter, community or regular show. Those relationships feed your bigger engagements. People hire you for the big project after they've gotten to know you.

What business basics do small business owners forget to check?

Broken links on your website are a common one, especially in the header and footer. Blogs and podcasts often fade after a few posts. On the money side, check subscriptions you don't use, your profit margins, whether you've raised prices this year, and whether you're saving receipts.

How can I build a stronger relationship with my best client?

Take them to lunch and make it phone-free, with both phones left in the car. Being fully present changes the conversation. It costs you a lunch, and with a great customer that's worth it.

Worth quoting

How powerful would it be to take your best client to lunch? You are buying, but the only rule is no phones.

Pat Miller on Businessing

You don't have to go get new customers every day 'cause they're with you forever.

Pat Miller on Businessing

All of that activity below the line comes when you're putting purposeful, consistent effort in engaging above the line.

Pat Miller on Businessing

Have we raised our prices in the last calendar year? What do the credit card statements look like? Are you saving your receipts?

Pat Miller on Businessing

In this episode

• News: Iran and a presidential post
• The trend toward in-person experiences
• Take your best client to a phone-free lunch
• Why solo diners are a restaurant's best customers
• Exercise: map customers by value and time
• AI story: AI that uses a fraction of the energy
• Business fundamentals: broken links, blogs and money basics
• Using Claude to find conference sponsors

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: What you sell answers from the Small Business Owners Community

Full transcript

and good morning. It is Tuesday, April 7th and we are Businessing. I am Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners community and the Fridays off guy, and I've got lots of fun stuff to share with you today. I hope you're in the mood to do some thinking and have some fun. As we're booting up the show, make sure that you check in at live dot small business community.com.

That way we know that you are with us, and it's a place where you can put in your LinkedIn account and promote your business and you can see who else is watching the show in real time and the people that are checking out the show. After the fact. So the folks that watch the show on YouTube after the fact can still check in and participate with what we're doing in our national map here.

This is a tool that I've always wanted to have for a show like this and this live dot small business community.com. It's a place where we can have conversation like what's on your mind today? Like earlier in the community, Michael was uh, talking about Claude and how he's got some questions about Claude and he can put that into the topic generator there and we can have a conversation about it.

And you can also check in and tell us that you're here with us. You can get on the SBOC 2026 ticket waiting list. You can subscribe to the newsletter, subscribe to YouTube, check out our sponsor Gen head 'cause they are sponsoring the show today. Thank you. Gen head and just basically. Be a part of the conversation because this show is designed to be a real time meetup for people that run a small business, not just another small business podcast.

Lots to cover on today's show because things are crazy. I saw a tweet that I frankly never thought I would see an American president tweet. If you thought that Donald Trump was off the hook tweeting recently and you haven't seen his Twitter account this morning, we've got plenty to talk about. Also, I wanna do an interactive exercise and help you visualize your customer base.

There's a story that I read about how restaurants are changing, uh, their understanding of who their best customers are. And I thought, I think we can do this too, because maybe your best customers, or at least the way to get your best customers isn't what you think. So we're gonna get out some paper and and markers and finger paints and crayons or whatever you need.

And we're gonna do some visualization about your best customers. The AI story of the day will help you see a future where people hate AI less because there's a breakthrough that happened that may make one of the use cases that people complain about. AI go away almost entirely. And then we have an announcement to make. From now until May 13th. Every day on this show, I'm going to reveal a feature of the small business owners

community conference in September, and every single day I reveal something else that we're doing either a feature at the event, someone that's speaking, some new way that we're gonna connect people. I'm gonna start revealing those. One day at a time between now and the conference. So thanks for tuning in again, live dot small business community.com. Check in and let's get this party started. Good morning, Nikki. It's great to see you, my friend. Alright, if you've not been on social media yet this morning, you probably haven't seen what's going on between the US and Iran.

And if you. Haven't really been paying attention. Let me catch you up. The Trump administration has given Iran basically surrender or agree to a deal and leading up to this deadline, Trump has been saying, do it or else we're going to get after your power plants and your bridges. We're gonna take out all of the infrastructure in your. Economy. Economy, you're just gonna be ruined if you don't do this by seven o'clock central, eight o'clock eastern tonight this morning, reportedly, because again, we can't understand or really know what's going on because this is a propaganda war as much as it is a shooting war.

But this morning it was reported that car island, which is this island that runs the entire Iranian oil economy, was attacked this morning. And that was a precursor to what was gonna happen later on today. Because one of the strategies to open the Strai of Horus is to take Kag Island, which would ruin the Iranian Iranian economy, give the US and the Israelis a, a foothold in the strai of Horus and in that body of water.

And it would change things strategically. Okay. So we're blowing stuff up on Car Island, but that's not the crazy part. I literally looked around to see this has to be AI generated. This has to be AI generated, and before I show you the tweet, if you haven't seen it, we know this is how Trump talks and we know this is how Trump negotiates. I don't know if I should take it. We can't take it literally. It's far too crazy to take. Literally, this is what was out this morning. A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will now. The highlight was added so it was easier to follow the part that made my head explode, but that's what the president put out this morning.

A whole civilization will die tonight. So of course there are people that are reading that thinking what's going on? Or he's not gonna, he wouldn't, would he? There's no way he's going. Like, that's one whole side of it. There's another side of it that's saying, well, maybe there's some military technology we haven't used yet. Maybe there's something that is not a nuke, but it could be really dangerous and it really could, uh, disrupt the Iranian economy that we've held back. Okay. And then there's the part of it that's saying, no, no, no. That's just how Trump negotiates. He's trying to scare him. Well, I, he scared the hell, like that made me wanna run to the grocery store.

That's like, do we have dog food and bottled water in the basement because this, this could get real. Uh, our, our president said that, think if, think if Kim Jong-Un had said that or think if, uh, Putin had put out a tweet this morning saying, well, the Ukrainian uh, culture dies tonight. We'd be kind of freaked out, but it's our guy that's saying it.

Which tells me Trump is at a point where this, this conflict has to end. He wants it over, he wants them to capitulate, he wants this to end. Now, I've got a conspiracy theory and I don't have my hat here. Those of you that have been watching these little shows that I do, uh, consistently know I have a conspiracy theory hat that I put on when I'm making weird predictions, but I'm gonna make one.

This is a conspiracy theory hat, so just pretend that I put it on. I think, and there was a rumor of this yesterday. I think the downed pilot story over the weekend was a decoy. I think that whole down pilot thing could have been a distraction from us going in and stealing the uranium that we've been looking for. What he's gonna announce is, no, we're not gonna nuke you. We took all of your uranium, and the conflict is over. It ends tonight. Now, total conspiracy theory. Don't know if that's true. Completely making it up source. Trust me, bro. Okay, so I know that I'm just talking out loud here, but this show is about you and me talking out loud because something clearly is going on.

There is no world. Where the President of the United States goes on social media and says, I'm nuking Iran tonight, so we can just take that off the tape. We know that's not gonna happen, but that's certainly how it reads. So tonight's gonna be interesting 'cause something is going to happen if they don't cave. And one report that I saw said, yeah, we're not gonna cave. Bring it on buttercup. And then there's also propaganda out there saying that Iran is parading school children onto their bridges. And it's just

a, it's just yucky. Just stay off of the internet today. That's my best advice. Stay off the internet. Make sure you have dog food and bottled water in the basement. Just in case. I mean, we, we don't know at this point, but something is going to happen in the next 24 hours. Hopefully, it's gonna bring this conflict down a notch and we're gonna be going in the right direction because things are starting to get uncertain.

The markets are down 400 points this morning, and oil is up to, what was it at last check? A hundred, $116 a barrel before I came on the air. And to show you how crazy we all know Trump is like, this is what he does. And I'm not even critiquing the guy. This is just how he negotiates to show how crazy he is. This morning, the sitting president said a whole civilization dies tonight and the stock market is down 400 points. Oh,

what a whole A civilization. All right, we'll go down just a little bit. That just shows that we all know that he's not literal, is he? Question mark. Another story I wanna hit on this morning is the trend towards in-person experiences. We've talked about this on the show that as our AI integration and we continue to live our life on screens intensifies, there is this now starting to be spoken, yearning for the retro, and it's something I think we should start paying more attention to this, as you know, or maybe you don't, has exploded all over the internet.

The Weather Channel is doing, coming up a look at your local radar, but first, the current local conditions. Conditions that are happening right now, and it's a custom weather forecast crafted like it used to be on the Weather Channel. It's so comforting to watch this because it reminds me of a time when we weren't seeing tweets like that and I didn't have to be up to date on all my nine social networks.

I could just kind of. Smooth Jazz. Your local 36 hour forecast from the Weather Channel connected to this and this explosion of metro. This story is, bringing a master is notoriously, you can't even bring a. Especially for the last few years, there are ongoing think pieces about how wonderful. It's that we're all in person and we're all present and we're all enjoying

the golf tournament rather than doing this the whole time. And when there's a big amazing moment. We don't have our cameras up like this. We're just present. I'm always looking at these kinds of stories. And I'm thinking, well, what can we do with that? How can we tap into that? And I think we can tap into that. There's an idea I've been sitting on for a long time that I haven't taken action on, but I wanna think about what you could do with it.

How powerful would it be to take your best client to lunch? You are buying, but the only rule is no phones. Not, I'm just gonna set it down and look at it. No, leave your phone in the car. What would happen if you did that? It would be a totally different conversation, like a.com disconnected lunch or something. Or if you did a brainstorming session

in their office. No laptops, no phones. The presence and the interaction would be completely different. Than what we get on an average day. I wanna do a networking event like that, say the next Milwaukee SBOC meetup where you can come in, it's free to attend, but you have to attend in full, which means no devices. I think there are people that wouldn't come because of it. I think the conversations would go through the roof. I think the interaction would be through the roof. I've even daydreamed about having the SBOC conference without any phones, but that's three days. I don't think people could do that

many something here. I would encourage you to try this with one of your clients or a potential lead, and it'll cost you lunch, but who cares? Talk with one of your great customer, that would be totally worth it. Who's here with us? Scared. He scared. Double hockey. Scary for sure. Good morning. This. If you're just tuning in, make sure you scan the QR code. Getting everybody together, qr See everybody. H

Who's this guy? What? Look at this. We got someone from over here who's this? We've got Peter from. Welcome to the show, my friend. How did I not see Peter from Lagos, Nigeria? I think I Is there anybody else? Peter, you are our first national. That's incredible. Okay. That's kind of neat. So if you're watching today and again live or on replay, please go to live small business community com and say hello to Peter.

Awesome Peter. Thanks for tuning in. Oh, and now I broke it too. So now I have, we'll come back to that lead story today is tying a few things together and we're going to talk about something that's happening in restaurants. And then I'm gonna ask you to walk through and exercise using a pen and a paper. So grab your pen and paper and I want you to think with me and tying this to the last story, perhaps you can turn your phone off. Or you can at least set it aside. Rebecca, good morning. Great to see you. There's a trend in restaurants that's kind of rewiring the way that people are running their restaurant.

For a long time, people assumed that the best restaurant reservations were large groups. We get a group of six, a group of eight, they're here celebrating something. Boy, look at all of this turn that we get for the restaurant. This is fantastic and it's good and it's good money. A big group of people, they run up a big check. That's fantastic. But there's a new study out that says solo diners are going up in. Turn time, meaning they're getting more solo diners in their restaurants than they used to. Solo diners are up 22% in the past year and they're not slowing down, so people are going out to eat by themselves. And this old school thinking was thinking, whoa, man, solo diners, I don't know.

But the new research has come out and the research says a solo diner spends 48% more than a person in a group. Forever. People thought groups were better and groups were big chunks of revenue. But solo diners are driving more profitability per seat of people that come in and they eat. Isn't that. Isn't that amazing? And that kind of changes the way that you think about filling a restaurant. Yum. Brands is the, the brand that was quoted in the story, and I think that's KFC and Domino's, maybe it's one of those big conglomerates. Yum. Brand said that this whole thing is called the me, me, me economy. I want to go out to eat.

So I'm gonna go out to eat and I don't care if people are with me or not. Steve, good morning. Great to see you. So I thought, okay, if. The entire restaurant industry could think that large groups are more profitable, when in reality they're finding out that individual diners are really profitable for them as well. What might we learn if we think about the types of products and services that we offer for our business? Because traditionally, we would map out who are our best customers by going through a few factors. We would think who spends the most, and we would think how much profit is in that product. There's revenue and then there's profit.

So this might be a high revenue product, but how much profit is involved in this product or this customer engagement? Then there's time consideration if you're a solopreneur like me, if you can make $50 by emailing something to someone by just selling a product. Versus $150, but you have to spend 60 minutes with them. Which one do you want? A $50 email with zero minutes spent is pretty incredible. You also have to think about customer acquisition cost. How much does it cost me to

get an additional customer? And then you also have to think about churn. When I get one. How long do they stay with me? All of these things go into the consideration of, well, who do I want my customers to be? And which customers am I going after now, and which ones are the best for me based on the products and services that I offer? So I thought maybe we could explore a visualization. Now this is where I want you to get out a piece of paper, and I want you to do this 'cause I can see your paper. Steve, I, I can see you.

Yes, I know you're rolling your eyes, but I see you Steve, piece of paper and draw four quadrants. So XY access, boop, and whoop. Right? So you got four boxes. And in those four boxes, we're gonna lay 'em out like this. On one axis is the value of the customer, and the bottom is how long they spend with you. This, I think, is a traditional way. If we said, Hey, Barbara, or Hey Rebecca, who are your best customers?

This maybe is how you'd lay it out. You would think in the top right. These are the customers that have a long time horizon with me. They sign with me and they're with me forever, and they're high value, meaning I'm giving them a lot of value, but they also pay me a lot. So these are the customers I spend my most time with and I get a ton of revenue from.

Maybe it's not much profit, but big dollars long relationships. Top right corner, top left corner. Maybe I have a 90 day engagement with them, but I make good money on them. So high value for 90 days, but it's only a 90 day engagement. It's not a long-term engagement. So you see how those two top quadrants, I do something really valuable for them for 90 days, or I do something really valuable for them for a long period of time.

That's above the line. And then below the line are people that. You work with for a short period of time with low value, maybe you give them a PDF, maybe you sell them a $49 course. Maybe they come to one event of yours, low value, short term. These people are just checking out the business. They're just learning about who you are. You don't have a lot of time spent with them, but you give them some value for a low dollar amount. And then the bottom right hand side would be low value. For a long term, maybe they join a group that you run, or they are a subscriber to a paid newsletter, something like that. They're with you for a long period of time, but there's not a lot of revenue there, and you don't have to do a bunch of heavy lifting.

Now, if you're watching this on replay, this is when you would hit boop. You would pause the video. 'cause what I want you to do. With this XY access is, think about the products and where they go. I have the show, the show. This show. We're gonna hang out for a long time, but I'm not doing a ton of work just for you, but this would be the low value long term.

Square bottom right. We get together daily. We have a good conversation about business. I can talk to a bunch of people at once, but I'm providing a little bit of value to a whole bunch of people and we're doing it daily, so we're hanging out frequently. Bottom right, bottom left would be low value. Short term would be, I'm gonna do a $29 webinar on how to set up.

Claude. Cool. You come. You learn how to set up Claude and you're gone. That's it. Low value, short term, high value. Short term would be the AI installation group where I'm gonna bring people together for six months or 10 months and teach them how to install AI in their bus, in their business. They're gonna pay more. I'm gonna spend more time with them. It's gonna be great money that's gonna go in the top left. And then the top right, high value, long-term. I've got one-on-one clients that I consult with. I meet with them twice a month. Every month. We're spending hours together. I'm deeply involved in their business.

Ongoing masterminds, high value, long-term partnerships. I want you to think about all this. Now, we're not gonna do this whole exercise in real time, but I encourage you to go through this exercise 'cause it will start to pop out at you like, whoa, that's where my products are distributed. This is where I'm spending my time. So hold onto this thought with step one, and now let's go into step two. Step two is, well, how do we get to more of those customers

that give us a lot of money and we work with for a long time? Because that top right quadrant is insanely valuable. You don't have to go get new customers every day 'cause they're with you forever. You don't have to drive your rates there because they're already paying you a healthy rate. You build long-term relationships with these customers so they become more and more solid and lower churn over time. That top white right quadrant is money, especially when you're a solopreneur entrepreneur. So where could and should we be spending our time?

I think this is a good example of it. I just flipped the quadrant. Now think about where your products go. Low value, short term. You have events, you have meetups, you are getting people together with awareness and education about what you're doing. And on the right side, you're building relationships like the small business owners community dollars a month.

We're together. I appreciate our members, but that's not a high value relationships and those, all of those things above the line are the things that slide down into the bottom. This is just a traditional ascension funnel. The idea of the restaurant understanding that solo diners are so valuable. If they mapped out this quadrant, they may have missed, wait a minute, they're insanely profitable, and if I can get them to come here every Friday night for their meal special. They could be a

high value long-term partner of mine, and I may not have caught it if I wasn't mapping out what products I'm offering and what my relationship to those products is. Step one is to map out what you have. This is what I'm doing, and then ask yourself the question, how do I get more of that top right quadrant? Perfect. Flip it. Put your time and energy into the stuff above the line. The stuff above the line will drive your know, like, and trust factor. It'll build customer relationships so you can have more people to pitch those bottom of the line products too.

And when they become bottom of the line products, that's where you really can start driving some revenue. On the left hand side, uh, Stephanie is showing up and doing a complete rebrand of all their graphics. Same with Theresa. This isn't one logo and I'm gone. It's a complete visual re-imagination of who they are and what they do. It might only take them 90 days, but it's gonna be 10 grand over 90 days, and they wouldn't get that opportunity if they weren't aware of who they are above the line. On the bottom right hand side, high value, long term, Steve is gonna build a relationship with someone, be the mc, their events, and, and make the entire program go for a 12 month engagement at mega bucks.

But they didn't know that Steve was the guy for the job until they subscribed to his substack on the top right. Relatively low engagement. Long-term relationship builds the know, like, and trust moves them below the line. We think as we try and build our small businesses, it would be really great if I had more people above the line on the top right quadrant in that dark red color, thinking about how we get there.

Thinking about that long-term value and understanding that there is value in short and long-term engagements below the line. The fastest way to make money is to do a a four or five week program. You can charge 10 grand for, you don't have to hold hands with every client till the end of time. You can get customer work that's here and then gone, that makes you really good cash.

Nothing wrong with that, but all of that activity below the line comes when you're putting purposeful, consistent effort in engaging above the line. Very important for you to think about, and I encourage you to do this exercise. Think about. Where your customers are, think about how they're engaging with you and you can find a better way forward in your small business.

Doris is with us this morning. Doris, it's great to see you as well. And Rebecca Bryan, a formal hello to you and I mentioned Steve who's in the house. Great to see you. And Stephanie Kern is here with us as well. Stephanie Kern. I need an update on the new sticker club. If you missed yesterday's show, Stephanie Kern launched, finally we bullied her into it.

The new small business sticker club. And you gotta drop the link in the chat here, Stephanie. So all of these little sayings and the things we're having fun with, they're now live. And Stephanie, we really should bully her further 'cause she's not charging for the sticker club. I'm really happy she's doing it, but you should be charging a couple of bucks a month for it, but you can decide what you'd like to do.

Drop it into the map here, Stephanie, in the topics of the map. That way everyone that watches the show will see it and put it in the chat here as well so people can sign up for the new sticker club. I'm really excited that you're doing it. Uh, it's gonna be a whole lot of fun. So the new small business Sticker Club is up and running. Congratulations, Stephanie. Definitely excited for you. We're gonna talk about AI here in a little bit because there's a breakthrough with AI that could force us to hate

AI less. While we love ai, I do small business guy, I love ai, I love it. It's helping me move so fast, and I'm getting so much done. But if you go out on the street and say, hi, John Q Public, what do you think of ai? Hmm, not very popular. There's a breakthrough that I read this morning that may have something to do with that, and it might help us turn around the PR story on AI in the us. Before we get there, let's talk about ai. Thanks to our friends at Gen Head. They are sponsoring today's show. Gen Head is bringing an AI powered CRM to help you get more stuff done, scale your business, but don't scale the chaos along with it because AI or Gen Head rather, is bringing AI powered solutions to bring all of your small business tools into one place.

CRM, customer communication, marketing and social media, your blogging, your funnels, your websites, they are all in one place@genhead.com. It powers my business and if you're just overwhelmed with all the places you have to go to log in and two factor authentication and get 'em to talk to one another. And did I download the tags? And just there's gotta be a better way. And there is gen head.com. If you want a free demo, connect with the team@genhead.com. Tell 'em that we sent you. They'll walk you through how your business becomes simpler and easier without having to hire someone to drive it. That's at gen head.com. Check 'em out@genhead.com.

Thanks to Nikki and the team for being partners here on the show. Stephanie's telling us about her sticker club. She's got 10 people signed up so far, which is amazing. Okay, so we have 10 subscribers to the sticker of the month club, which is fantastic. Let's get this link over here in the chat so everybody can see it. Get this in there. There it is. That's a really good start. One day, 10 spa or 10 uh, participants. That is fantastic. So thank you Stephanie for sharing. I really

appreciate it. Okay. Ai, a lot of people hate it breaking news. A lot of people hate AI and they hate AI because of all the things. People are guessing about what's gonna happen with AI in the future. People think AI's gonna take their job and many of them are right, and people think AI stole a bunch of intellectual property. And yeah, you're kind of right on that. And AI uses too much power. Kind of right on that as well. The AI story of the day, however, is new research, and you'd have to think I was expecting this, someone figured this out.

Researchers at Tufts University Smart Guy School, they just built an AI system that uses 1% of the energy that the standard model uses. It achieved 99% accuracy on a reasoning task where traditional AI only got to 34%. So this is not a dummy. It reduced training time from 30, 36 hours to 34 minutes. Very capable AI system that is going to run on a fraction of a fraction of the total power output.

Now I considered going into great detail and explaining to you, you know, exactly how it worked, but I thought, you know, I, I, I don't wanna burden you with that kind of knowledge that I carry around in my head. I just thought, you know, I'll just, just, I'll say, I'll, I'll, I'll take care of the technology and how everything works. You just enjoy the fact. No, I'm just kidding. I have no idea how it works for all I know

to make this happen. But it's happening. And think about what would happen to the AI story both here and everywhere. If it was no longer AI's gonna take my job and ruin the environment and drive up our energy bills and data centers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If all of that power generation and calculation time was taken off of the table, how much better would the AI story be?

You should love ai. It's only gonna take your job. I mean, it's, it's grow. At least it wouldn't be. It's gonna take your job and ruin the planet. So incremental improvement from ai, but this is an exciting story. Definitely something to keep track of. We are reducing the power footprint for AI generation and hopefully that's something that continues.

Last night, national championship game, Michigan won. Do we care? Do we care? The Michigan won? I don't think so. A lot of people are really mad that Michigan won because they're thinking college sports are now. The story that came out immediately after is that coach has only been there and that all five were hired guns. None of them were freshmen. College frustrated. Now they're frustrated because players are getting paid above the table because players table,

but it's ruining college basketball. Okay, bro, whatever basketball Michigan won, good for them. Another story that came out was Michigan won the game because they were excellent from the free throw line. They hit 25 of 28 free throws in the game last night, and I think they won by six or something. So their free throw shooting really put the game away. And it brought up a conversation about fundamentals. You know, I played basketball for a minute. I'm kind of tall. And the coach would always talk about fundamentals.

Fundamentals and free throws should be automatic. And I thought, okay, what fundamentals are we ignoring? Where should we be spending just a touch more time to make sure our business is what it needs to be? And I thought of a few areas, and maybe you can think of an area or two and some of the specialists that are here and Kristen's here this morning.

Good morning Kristen. Great to see you. Kristen builds websites for a, a living, and that was the first place that I went on One of the fundamentals that we put out there every day that is so wrong. It's LOL, wrong. Go into your website and start checking all the links on your website, how many links on your website? And I'm not talking like blog page, 14 pages deep. I'm talking about in the header, in the footer on the main page, how many of those links are broken? How many of those links are outdated?

Like seriously, I just lost my breath thinking about it. 'cause I know that my, I know like this is pot kettle. I totally get it. But I started thinking about the places where, boy, I should probably check on that. And that was the first place that I went. Good morning Chris, and great to see you. So yeah, we need to check out the links that are on our website because I think if we clicked around a little bit. Uh, we would know that they're not nearly as good as they should be.

And I'll look at Kristen's telling us to preach. Yes, we are preaching because our links are not what they need to be. Also goes with blogging and creating content. Uh, there's a thing in creating podcasts called Pod Fade, where people start a podcast and by the, I think it's the ninth episode. I forget what the number is. I wish Elsie was here. He would know it's eighth episode, ninth episode. On average podcasts stop because people think now it's podcasts, great, I'm gonna do it. And episodes one, two, and three are fine, and

then people stop doing them. That also happens to blogs and this again, to pick on websites. You can see this. Websites traditionally launch with a blog, and there are four or five blogs out of the gate, and then every week becomes every two, which becomes every month, which becomes every quarter, which becomes, I forgot to do it since last Christmas. And you go to their blog page and their latest blog is like October of 24.

It's like, oh, yikes. Woo. Basics people. So blog page links that are all over the place. And then I started to think about money and I thought, oh my gosh, if we're really gonna get, you know, really get into it today about the basics. We're not paying attention to things we're paying for that we don't use subscriptions that we don't have to have. What is the profit margin on the stuff that we sell? Have we raised our prices in the last calendar

year? What do the credit card statements look like? Are you saving your receipts? I mean, we could go on and on and on about the basics when it comes to money. It can get, it can get pretty deep. So that's my deep thought of the day. Congratulations to Michigan and, uh, for winning the national Championship, even though everyone's mad at you for doing so. But it might be, again, another piece of homework that you should consider. I need to look through my stuff to make sure. I am brilliant at the basics, just like Michigan. All right.

Coming up, we're going to talk about our first announcement for the small business owners community conference. We've been counting down and I'm gonna change the QR code that's up here on the corner of the show. We've been counting down to the on sale for our tickets for the sixth Annual Small Business Owners Community Co Community conference happening here in Milwaukee

in September, and this conference is so much fun, always educational, great to connect with people. If you enjoy this show, if you're a member of the SBOC, you would enjoy the conference because our theme this year is find your People. We're walking around the internet right now, hit with AI generated content, synthetic content, overtaking every platform that you're trying to make an honest interaction in, and you don't know where to go to find other people that are going through what you're going through.

Find your people at the sixth Annual Small Business Owners Community Conference. I've got our first announcement. I'm gonna make an announcement every day on this show all the way till May 13th when the tickets go on sale. But our first announcement is coming up in just one minute. I gotta give you one more plug for the AI installation group. Michael is over on the map right now saying, what should we talk about? We should talk about Claude.

Yeah, we should talk about Claude. We should talk about what Claude did for me this morning. Do you know what Claude did for me this morning? Just I'll tell you about the installation group in a second. You know what Claude did for me this morning? I was working on the conference and I thought, I need to, I need to find a sponsor or two. Where can I find some sponsors? I said, Hey, Claude. And he said, yes, pat. 'cause my Claude talks to me. How you doing bro? I'm good, bro. Fist pound. Alright, so me and Claude were vibing. I said, Hey, Claude. Yes, pat.

Conference is coming up. I know I need more sponsors on it, bro. He didn't really say that. I said to Claude, okay, I need some sponsors for the conference. Here's what's available still to sponsor, and I'm looking for some new sponsors that I could go approach. Look for any entrepreneurial EV entrepreneurial events that have happened within driving distance of this conference.

Look up who their main sponsors were, their subs sponsors, were, compare them against the average small business owners, community member, and rank them based on fit and availability. And then I want you to search the web and give me their LinkedIn contact information and email for the people that I should contact. And it said, I got you fam. About five minutes later, it came back with a complete report scored by who they are, what local event they sponsored, who their contact person is, their LinkedIn profile link, and it was ready to draft an outreach email for me to them based on the agenda of the conference. Hey person, we're doing this.

It would be a great fit. Why don't we have a conversation? And I said, yeah, yeah. That happened this morning and I fired out 18, I think it was 18, customized, strategically placed email outreaches to sponsors. To start the conversation with people that I know would be a good fit based on what they've already done, what we do, and what they're looking to do with the business strategy they've already expressed.

That's the type of thing that Claude Cowork is doing for me. What is your AI doing for you? If it is a glorified Chrome Google search, you're not getting the most out of Claude. Outta Cloud Code AI installation group is all about starting. Thursday, almost tomorrow. Thursday morning is the first meeting of the AI installation group. We have a small group of a players that are gonna

learn how to use Claude Cowork to do what's possible and help them build a business that goes way beyond having a chat bot in their life. We're gonna do a mastermind meeting once a month. We're gonna do an AI slam once a month. We come up with solving problems. Sharing the automations that we've built and the, the scheduled tasks, the skills that we've built as well. And together we're gonna end up installing AI agents that are running the business. It's gonna be awesome. I have one day left to put people in this program, so if you're interested in coming into

the AI installation so you two can also WTF call. QR code need to sign up today because kick Thursday morning and you should see the in this, all of the A players, all of the A players know we go and it's gonna be so much collaboration. Thursday morning, seven 30 installation. Very excited about that. And yes, some of you, because you're nice and smart.

Conference. Here's what we're doing with the conference. I'm gonna announce a feature of the conference every day from now until May 13th. Tickets for the conference go on sale May 13th, but they don't all go on sale at once. On May 8th, we're going to reveal and put on sale our VIP. Package, which has up close and personal access to our keynote speaker and a special small group event.

The day after the conference, we're not gonna reveal the whole thing, but on May 8th, the VIP tickets go on sale. On Monday, May 11th, members of the small business owners community 160, some out of them, get access to the tickets. On Tuesday, May 12th, members of the wait list will get access to buy the tickets, and then on Wednesday, May 13th. All of the tickets will go on sale. If there's any left, we have room for 200 people, 75 tickets or 85 tickets are spoken for, which means we have 115 tickets that are gonna go on sale in that order. So your best chance to get into the conference is gonna be to get on the wait list if you're not an SBOC member, of course.

And today's, uh, feature that I get to announce is underscoring our commitment to this year's theme. The theme of this year's conference is Find Your People, and as we go on through the summer and as we continue to do business together, as I mentioned, it's getting more and more synthetic and more computer driven. And sometimes you just need to be able to sit down with a friend and vent. You need to sit down and say, uh, Theresa, am I crazy? Does this happen to you? Or what am I missing? What, what don't I

understand about what's happening? And have someone that knows the journey that you're on. Not your wife, not your husband, not your parents, not your friends. 'cause none of them understand what you're going through. Someone else that knows what you're going through that can say, did you think about this? Oh, that's what happens when you find your people. That's our theme this year at the conference, and it's open to anyone that wants to attend. So our announcement today is that our very first event at the conference, the Tuesday night of the conference, we're going to have our first timer welcome reception.

We did it for the first time last year, and it went over great and it's addressing a very real thing. Let's say what I'm talking about with the conference sounds really good. I'd love to go. This sounds really awesome, but I, I don't know anybody. I'm not a community member and it sounds like fun, but I've never been there before. Like Michael, maybe Michael's never been to Milwaukee before and he watches the show and we know one another, but he doesn't know the whole group and he might feel a little out of place. That's what the first timer welcome reception is all about. Tuesday night, we check in and we take all of the first timers.

This is your first time here. Great. Come on. We all go into a room and I will personally go through everything that's gonna happen and I'm gonna go through what to expect, how to unlock the most out of the conference. And we're gonna introduce you to some of the folks that have been around for a long time, and they're gonna go, Hey, Michael. All right. Hey, let's, let's go get a beer. Let's go talk to one another. Hey, let's go walk the venue. Let me introduce you to some other people that are around here. So you go from guy with a, a name badge and you don't like know anybody to, uh, someone you're having a hamburger with.

They introduce you to someone else that's really cool, and then you're off and running and you go from first timer to old friend in the matter of 45 minutes. That hump that everyone has to get over when they join a new event that they've never been to before, it is super real. Even the most confident people will feel that. Intimidation to join a group that they're not yet in. And the first timer event is our opportunity to turn strangers into friends and get people into.

The community and get them on board. So the very first announcement is the reveal that we are going to be doing the first timer event again this year. So that's Tuesday night. That is September 15th. And if you are thinking about coming to the conference, just know you don't need to be nervous about not knowing anyone. We're gonna make sure that you get connected to super cool people

immediately so you can start. Unlocking the value that's inside the SBOC conference. So if you wanna come to the conference scan, the QR in the top right corner, SBOC community members will take care of you on Monday. You'll get access to buy your tickets on May 11th, but I'm gonna do another announcement tomorrow. Here on the show, I'm gonna do an announcement every day on the show between now and the tickets going on sale, and soon I'll be revealing who our speakers are and what our themes are gonna be, and some of the new features that we've baked up to make this year's conference better than ever. Very, very excited about it.

Okay, here we go. What is Michael saying? I had to take a 20 minute call and I come back and I'm being talked about. Oh, sorry dude. You stepped away and Yeah, we're talking about, Hey, Michael's outta the room. Everybody talk about him? No, I was just sharing that if you came to the conference, you'd be a first timer and we'd make you feel nice and welcome.

And yes, Doris was a part of the first timer event. And see now Doris isn't gonna be a first timer 'cause she's an old friend now. An old friend. I came out wrong. You're not an old, you know what I mean? She's a good friend, not an old friend. I hope to see you again this year, Doris. Alright. It's a great show today. Thank you for hanging out. I hope I really encourage you to take time to map out your customers. You may be surprised on where your products land in this matrix, and you also would be surprised if you considered how much time you're spending with the value above the line so you can drive value down below the line.

Definitely something to consider and we can also consider whether or not we're all gonna be here tomorrow. So, you know what, drink the good stuff this evening 'cause nobody knows what's gonna happen and uh, we will all find out together. I'm Pat Miller Friday's off guy, founder of the small business owners community. Thank you so much for tuning in today. Thank you for checking in on the map live dot small business

community.com and we'll be back here tomorrow at 11 o'clock doing what we do, which is connecting you. And helping you build a better business with Businessing, with Pat Miller. Until then, take care. Talk to you soon.