Host your own event and every advantage moves to your side of the table. You pick the room, you pick the topic, you pick who is in it, and you are the one standing in the middle of it.
Pat runs the math out loud. A qualified lead from a big conference booth can run you four hundred dollars. A morning spread from Panera and a couple jugs of coffee for eight or ten people runs under two hundred. Then he walks through how he actually builds an event, starting with the test every event has to pass before you invite anybody: does it save them time, make them money, or build their network. Plus picking your format, curating the room to owners only, why you have to over-invite because 20% of your yeses do not show up, and the difference between hosting a community and hosting an audience. He started with the Breakthrough Breakfast. Three people, some bagels, ninety minutes. Six years later it is a conference.
Idea Slam Mailbag: I am terrible at telling my story on social media, so how do I do it without sounding like a sales pitch? Pat’s answer is to quit using your own words. Ask your clients to describe what you did for them, then go say that. Nobody cares about your why. They care about what changes when they hand you a credit card.
The AI story of the day is the one nobody wants to answer out loud. Forty-six percent of Gen Z workers say leaning on AI is making them less sharp, and half of employees say they are too dependent on it at work. Pat’s take: working with a thought partner is fine, handing over your judgment is not, and telling those two apart is going to be the whole game.
Businessing is the daily live show where small business owners figure out what to do next. Hosted by Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community: owners only, nobody pitching, $9 a month.
In this episode
- 00:00 – Nobody taught you how to run a business, and today it is building your own room
- 01:15 – Why not host your own event instead of standing around at somebody else’s
- 02:01 – You went to the chamber breakfast and left with nothing
- 02:39 – The math, and the $400 lead at a conference booth
- 03:37 – Do it in the morning, because breakfast is cheap to cater
- 04:04 – When is the last time you had a bagel with an ideal client
- 04:56 – The Breakthrough Breakfast: three people, coffee, ninety minutes
- 06:13 – The test every event has to pass before you invite anybody
- 07:01 – Pick your format, then curate the room
- 07:50 – Only the people who sign the checks understand the people who sign the checks
- 09:02 – Over-invite, because 20% of your yeses will not show
- 09:29 – Community or audience, know which one you are throwing
- 11:05 – Ten minutes of presentation, then let them grill you
- 11:50 – Do not let them leave without selling the next one
- 13:04 – Barbara asks: host it alone, or partner up
- 16:27 – Money Masters Bookkeeping
- 17:56 – Idea Slam Mailbag: telling your story on social without the sales pitch
- 18:48 – Nobody cares about your why
- 19:13 – Ask your clients to describe what you did, then use their words
- 22:38 – Mitchell asks: how do you do the math on a sponsorship
- 25:58 – Foureva Media
- 27:27 – AI story of the day: are we forgetting how to think
- 29:43 – AI is a junior employee, and a thought partner is not cheating
- 30:36 – Collaborate all you want, but keep the judgment
- 32:36 – I walked into the conference venue this morning and saw the whole thing
- 34:26 – This week in the SBOC, and Monday is the last show before the conference
Resources mentioned
Full transcript
And good morning. It is Thursday, September 10th, and we are businessing. Nobody taught you how to run a small business, but look at you. You’re doing it anyway. This is the place where small business owners figure out what to do next. I’m Pat Miller, host of the show, founder of the Small Business Owners Community.
Damn glad to see you. When you pop into the show, you should go to the chat section, and you should say, “Hey, Pat, I’m here. How you doing?” And bonus points if you drop the link to your business, because we all wanna support one another. So Stephanie Kern, great to see you this morning. Drop that Vanderbloemen Creative link in the chat.
You do the same whether you’re watching it live or you’re on replay. We love to have you with us. Abby Miller, Stories Framed Photography, Miller Headshot Company. Welcome, Rebecca. Great to see you as well. On the show today, we have an AI story of the day, which is a little bit troubling. People are starting to report that they’re not thinking as good as they used to now that they’re using AI.
Is it rotting our brains? We’ll talk about that. Good morning, Barbara. We will also do our Idea Slam question of the day. Uh, what was the Idea Slam que– I don’t remember the… We-we’ll get to it. Let’s start with the businessing big story of the day, and let’s say thanks to Money Masters Bookkeeping and Foureva Media for being our sponsor.
Businessing big story of the day, I love this topic because it’s something I built my business on. Why not host your own event? Why not be the person that makes the room and invites everyone and brings them together underneath your name? I wanna talk about the math that supports the idea, and I wanna tell you what I’ve learned about starting small group events, because I’ve been doing it for a while.
Barbara Fausett, good morning. Welcome to the show. So if you’ve been trying to get in front of your very best clients, and you’ve been running ads, and you’ve been out there posting social media posts and just wondering why you can’t get those great conversations, hosting your own event may be the way to go.
And you’ve had that experience where you go to other people’s events. Go to the chamber breakfast, you stand there, you talk to two or three people, you hand out a few business cards, and you’re gone. You didn’t get to choose what the format was. You didn’t get to choose the topic. You weren’t the host in the center of attention.
You were literally in somebody else’s room. So how about we think about doing it differently? And let’s start with the math. The math is really important. If you’re a small shop, let’s take Barbara, for example. She runs a bookkeeping firm. She’s got a bunch of clients, but she doesn’t do a bunch of big public-facing events, but she could.
So you run your own shop, and you think, “Wow, man, hosting my own event. I don’t know. I gotta get a space. I gotta pay for food,” and keep it simple. And let’s be able to compare one event to another. If you go to a conference, like a big conference, and you get a booth, and it costs you a significant amount of money to be there, research is showing that a lead from a conference like that, one of these major conferences, a qualified lead may run you four hundred dollars for one qualified lead when you do these conferences, these big expos.
And they’re a great place to be ’cause you might get ten or twelve leads, but it’s not gonna be cheap. But if you build your own room, you can keep it really simple, and I’ll tell you in a second exactly how I do it, meaning what am I thinking about and how do I structure it? But mathematically, if you host your own room, do it in the morning.
Why the morning? Because the morning is way cheaper to cater than lunch or dinner. All you need is a spread from Panera, couple of those jugs of coffee. You’re under two hundred bucks. Bring eight or ten, twelve, fifteen people together. That’s it. This doesn’t have to be a major event. And you think, “Well, eight or ten or twelve people, I mean, what’s the point of that?”
Okay. When’s the last time you sat down and had a bagel with an ideal client? What about two? What about five? What would you pay for eight? Holy cow. Definitely worth it. And the cost is really low, and you get to be the host. You get to be the center of attention. You’re in charge of the invite list. You’re in charge of the conversation.
You get to do all of that stuff. It’s absolutely magic. And when you compare two hundred some odd dollars at Panera versus several thousand dollars to put up a booth someplace and hope that they notice you. The math absolutely maths. So I wanna shortcut this for you. And if you have questions about hosting your own event, drop ’em in the chat, because I really believe in doing these things because I’ve been doing them forever.
Not only did I do it when I was in radio for 22 years, concerts, backstage events, state fairs, summer fests, Major League Baseball games on opening day, like, I’ve been in front of the public doing events for decades. But when I started my own business, it started just like I’m telling you this morning. I started with the Breakthrough Breakfast.
It was me and three people. I got some coffee and bagels, and we brainstormed for 90 minutes, and I did that consistently to let people know who I am and what I’ve done, and it worked really great. And then after the Breakthrough Breakfast, we expanded it to do a series of events, uh, that we called Brand Crafted, where it was me interviewing some thought leaders inside of a craft brewery bar, and that got a little more expensive because, you know, you gotta buy a couple of beers, and you gotta buy appetizers and stuff.
And then it expanded into the conference, right? There’s the conference. So now for six years, I’ve gone from little event to a little bit bigger event to a way bigger event, and the number of qualified relationships and people I’ve had the chance to meet have scaled accordingly. Here’s how I build events, and here’s how I want you to build events.
The first thing you have to do before you think about who you’re gonna invite, before you think about who’s gonna be the speaker or what you’re gonna do, you have to go through this, this test first. Is this event going to save me time, make me money, or build my network? If it doesn’t have any one of those, or if it’s not focused on one of those, you’re not ready to host the event.
So I wanna do an event. Ask yourself, “Does it save me time? Does it make me money? Or does it build my network?” Meaning for the attendees, what are they gonna get out of it? We always start with what’s in it for me. ’Cause if you say, “Hey, Barbara, come to my thing.” “Well, why would I come to your thing?” So have a clear point of view on what’s going to happen.
Once you do that, you get to think about your format. And I’m kinda selfish. I like to host events that I like. Like, what, what do I think people need? What kind of events do I like to host? But there are a zillion different events: conversations, straight education. You could have networking. You could do a mastermind.
You can do a lot of different ideas. So pick your format. So this is gonna be something where I’m gonna save time. I’m gonna hear from a speaker in a way to save time, and it’s gonna be done in a speaker Q&A kind of format. The next thing in is, is, is curate the room. There is power in event curation, and one way that I curate my rooms is that it’s not open to the general public.
Now, you don’t have to be an SBOC member to attend my stuff, but I do say this is an event for owners. If you run a business, you should come, which is different than some other business groups. I wanna have a bunch of owners in a room because only the people that sign the checks can relate to other people that sign the checks.
The salesperson, the manager, the part-time employee, they don’t understand what it’s like to run a business. So now you get to start curating who do you want to have attend. And in your business, you may say, Barbara, we’re talking about her, the bookkeeper, she may say, “For this particular event, I wanna curate it for people who run blue-collar businesses.
That’s gonna be my curation.” So I’m gonna build an event that saves them time, and it’s gonna be networking and education, and the people I’m going to invite are this group of people. Then make sure you invite a ton of them. Research shows 20% of the people you invite who say they’re coming don’t show.
You’re doing an event, you invite 10 people, you get 10 people to say yes, only eight will show up on game day, and that’s being conservative. It’s usually more than that. So over-invite. You will never… I don’t think I’ve ever had 100% participation for any sizable event, so you need to over-invite because you just won’t get enough people in the room otherwise.
Last thing to consider, and this is something that once someone pointed it out to me, I never unsaw, and this is not my concept, but I believe in it. There’s a difference between community and audience, and there’s a difference in the way you run your events between community and audience. A community is a group of people that are all there to learn and connect with one another, and you’re the host, that’s great, but they’re not necessarily there for you.
They’re there for the room you created and the people you invited. Whereas an audience is, “I’m Joe Blow, the thought leader. Come hear from me on how you can save time. I will be the one that gives you the answers. Oh, we don’t need to do any networking. It’s not about the other people in the room. You’re here for me.”
And if you’re a thought leader, that might work out exactly right. There’s no judgment between the two, but know what you’re throwing. You invite a bunch of people to a room, they’re here to hear from a speaker, and you monopolize the time. “Dude, I’m glad you put the show on, but I’m here to hear from the speaker.
I don’t want to hear your thoughts. I want to hear their…” You’ve seen this all the time. It’s something that happens all too often. One more thought about, two really, about hosting the event. When you host it, make sure that you make it entertaining. I, I am really starting to sour on long presentations.
Traditionally, here’s the speaker. How long does the speaker get? 60 minutes. What does everyone do by s- minute 15? They’re here. Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay.
Oh, oh, oh, yeah. Oh, I’ll sc– I’ll, I’ll take a picture of that slide. Great. Are these slides gonna be emailed to me? That’s normally what happens forty-five minutes, sixty minutes into a presentation.
I’m gravitating right now to ten minutes of a presentation and then Q&A with the audience. Subject matter expert, you’re gonna save me time. Tell me what I should do to save time, and then let me grill you with questions for the stuff I need to know. Make it fun, make it engaging, make it interactive.
That’s kind of the format that’s working for me, and I think the one that’s getting through the most right now. One more thought. When you’re done, be ready for the next one. So it’s game day. Let’s say you’re having an event on October first. When you’re in the event and it gets to the end, don’t let them leave without you saying, “Cool.
Our next event will be December first. Who wants to be there? Who’s signing up right now for the December first event?” This is something I learned way too late, but you will not have the same attention or affinity about your event like you do while they are at your event. So don’t let them leave until you give them the opportunity to sign back up for the next time you get together.
And as an event organizer, it’s just like, “Oh my gosh, I just want to get through this event. What do you mean I gotta plan the next event?” It is a total cheat code to be ready to go for the next event when you have this event in hand. If you want to meet the right people, if you want to control your networking, if you want to be the center of attention and make the room that you want to have come true, the math absolutely tracks.
It’s cheaper. There’s more control. You build great relationships. It takes a little bit of work, but you can absolutely do it, and you can do it in the right way to help grow your small business. I encourage you to take it on. Question from Barbara: Do you recommend doing it alone or maybe pairing your event with another provider?
Fair question. I would evaluate your ability to get it done. Do you have the money? Do you have the free brain space? Or are you naturally wired to be the person in front of the room? There is a strategy to not be the one that hosts the event, but be the one that sponsors the event. So you don’t have to put on the event.
You don’t have to invite all the people. You don’t have to even create all the content. You get to swoop in and tell everyone that you’re the person that made the event happen because you’re the sponsor, like Barbara is our sponsor for the SBOC conference. So my team and I have been working for six months or more to put on the event next week.
Barbara will stand on stage as our presenting sponsor and tell everyone about her business, and she didn’t have to do all of the organization that we did. So you could swoop in as a, as a sponsor. The other thing you could do is pair with someone, but I would prefer that you did it on your own. As soon as you pair it with someone, you’re sharing a vision with someone else.
And I know that sounds kind of selfish, but we’re kind of being kind of selfish here. We got into the business of hosting our own event because we didn’t want to go to other people’s events. So you’re gonna create your own event and then bring someone else in and start compromising immediately. If it’s a skill or capacity issue, partner with someone.
If you’ve got a really great business BFF and you know you’re on the same page, cool, partner with someone. But I would encourage you to do it on your own because you can get 10 people in a room, you could run by Panera and get some bagels and coffee, and you can start making an interesting event for your business.
Now, we could go on and on about events. I mean, I could talk to you… I could talk until 5 o’clock this afternoon about events and their value, the relationship building, the content that’s made in your name, the brand payoff. You know how I, I say all the time on the show that we’re in the business of transformations, not information, and when someone walks into the SBOC conference next week, they finally get it.
I say all the time on the air, “Oh, don’t grow it alone. No one taught you how to s- run a small business. We’re here to help you.” And that all sounds like, you know, language you’d see on a T-shirt. But by noon on the first day, every single person in the room goes, “Okay, I get it now. All these people are here to help me.
I get it.” So you have an opportunity to dis- display and demonstrate what you stand for. I’m a big event guy. I could go on and on, but we will move on now. The Idea Slam question of the day is about telling your story in your social media. Some of us go about it wrong. How can we make it easier to tell our story on social?
I’ll answer that question in a second, but first, Money Masters Bookkeeping, I told you she’s a sponsor for SBOC 26. Uh, Mitchell, good morning, great to see you. Uh, Barbara Fausett and her team have been taking care of small business owners for decades. They are there to help you finally understand your numbers and know where you stand.
Because you may think you had a great month, but do you have any profit left? You think your bank accounts look good, but are they really? What if you had someone that could interpret all those numbers and help you figure out what to do next? That’s what Money Masters Bookkeeping can do. Thirty-plus years of cleaning up the numbers.
Trust me, if you think your numbers are too nasty for her to take care of, they have seen it all. They’re QuickBooks certified, Digits certified, and they can help clients in all 50 states. So Mitchell or Barbara, wherever you are, Money Masters Bookkeeping can absolutely take care of you. And what’s cool is they meet you where you are.
They start with a phone call. And they will give you the next move review. So you scan the QR code right there. You get in touch with Barbara and her team at moneymasters4biz.com, and they will schedule a time with you for your next move review. That way you know what to do next and how you can get moving with the money in your business.
Our family’s focus is your family’s future at Money Masters Bookkeeping. Scan the QR code and start the conversation today. Thanks to Barbara and the team for being our partners at the conference and here on the show. Idea Slam question of the day is a simple one: I am terrible at telling my story on social media.
Some people can do it so effortlessly. How can I tell my social media story better so it doesn’t sound like a sales pitch? Many of us, when we talk about our business, we think we just need to describe it in a better way. If people only knew how good we are at what we do or how we make things happen or why we make things happen.
Remember that big trend? Tell them your why? Talk about things I could rant on. Nobody cares about your why. Nobody cares about your why. The only thing they care about is what’s in it for me. The only thing they care about is how you’re gonna make my life better. What is the transformation? If someone comes to you and gives you the credit card, what changes in their life?
That is the entire conversation that we’re having, and how do we have that conversation on our social media? If you look at most people’s social media, they’re talking about what they do and they’re describing their processes and that’s missing the point. And you can have this experience change for you if you ask your clients and your customers to describe what you’ve done for them.
You perform your service, you’re all done. “So just out of curiosity, how would you describe what we did?” And they’re not going to say, “Oh, well, you aligned all my brand assets and you simplified my SEO and you made me ready for blah blah blah blah blah.” Like, no. Instead, they’re gonna say, “Everyone knows what I mean.
I-I’ve talked about why I’m different. You found why I’m different and told the world.” That’s not aligning brand assets and fixing SEO titles. The transformation was you told everyone why I’m different, my phone’s ringing. Perfect. That’s the story to tell on social media. Don’t talk about what you did, how you did it, or why you did it.
Listen to your customers and tell their stories. Tell those stories on social. When you ask your customers to describe the transformation, they’re gonna use way different words than you use, and that’s what we get to tell on social. When you’re in doubt, don’t describe your stuff. Just pick up the phone and have these exit interviews, and that’s how we systematize this.
So find your social media conversations with your off-boarding conversations. Do a recap call with someone when you’re done. Ask them to fill out a feedback form. Uh, ask them the question, and I ask this question all the time: If someone hadn’t heard of me before, how would you describe what we do? Hmm.
That works really well. So don’t use your own words, use their words, and then when you hear them describe what you do, then you can start riffing off of that. That’s how you tell a better story on your social media. The other way that you tell a better story on social media is video. And not video of you in front of a screen with a tie, and you’re reading off a script.
Just talk to people about what’s going on and how you change their business. Leave all the technical stuff out. Leave all of the process out. Just talk about what’s different when they give you their credit card. So learn what’s different by talking to your clients, and then when you do your social media, make it as conversational as possible.
Do it in video if you can, and just go tell your story. Tell your story about the transformation you provide, and it’ll go a lot better. AI story of the day is coming up in a second. Is AI ruining our judgment? Are we fried? Are we cooked? What’s going on? Can we still think? Talk about that in a second.
Let’s see. Mitchell’s got a question. “Is there a certain percentage cost-wise when sponsoring to have the upside of sponsoring but hedging the cost?” So I think, Mitchell, you’re asking, uh, how, how do we make it worth it? When we’re sponsoring an event and considering the upside, how do we make that decision?
I’m sorry to paraphrase here, Mitchell. I just wanna make sure that I get your question correctly. When I’m talking to someone about sponsoring, ’cause I sell sponsorships all the time, I make a point to ask two questions. W- How does someone make the decision to work with you? Like, what is the benefit or the transformation that they are seeking from you when they decide to work with you?
Because as the event sponsor, I need to know what message we need to send. Barbara, ’cause we’ve been talking all about her, the Money Masters Bookkeeping, uh, people come to her when they don’t know what’s going on with their money and their books are a mess. Let’s just say that’s what it is. That’s the first step that we need to understand.
Then the second thing that I ask people is, generally, what’s the cost of a new client? If you get a new client, what is that worth to you? Oh, well, my new client stays for on average twenty-seven months, sometimes longer, sometimes less, but about twenty-seven months they stay, and I charge them this much per month, so the average customer is worth, you know, this much money.
Now you have a benchmark for making a decision on the sponsorship. Sponsorship is fifteen hundred dollars, let’s say, and the lifetime value of a customer is thirty-five hundred dollars. Now I know that I need to get at least one customer out of the deal, and it makes a good impression. Then you get to evaluate, well, what does it take to get a customer?
As a sponsor, you may say, “I get a customer after every four one-on-one conversations I have.” That’s how you make the decision. What is the likelihood that I’ll have four one-on-one conversations for this sponsorship? If you’re putting the name on the back of a marathon T-shirt, probably not very high.
Great to support a charity. That’s not a dig at charities. If you’re gonna go do Coaches Row where you get to sit down with 10 laser interviews or like coaching sessions with people, there’s 10 conversations. On average, you book a client every time you do four. You could calculate, I’m gonna get two clients out of this deal.
Then you can figure out if the math is work it, worth it. So you need to understand what does it take to get their attention. You need to understand how quickly, like how frequently you can book a client based on the number of conversations you have, and then you gotta evaluate the price of that sponsorship opportunity against those outcomes. I hope that explains the answer you were looking for here.
The traditional recommendation that I’ve heard is ten percent of our revenue should be spent in marketing. I’m sure Barbara can correct me on that, being the bookkeeper in the room. But that’s how I would evaluate a sponsorship. What is the likelihood that I’m gonna get clients out of this deal? And what do I need to do to get these clients?
And how can this event make that thing happen? So I hope that’s helpful. Thanks for tuning in, by the way, Mitchell. AI story of the day standing by, but first let’s talk about Foureva Media. Foureva Media, they are the sponsors of the stage at SBOC ’26, the big old conference happening next week. And Jamar Jones and I are completely in alignment when it comes to what does it take to build a winning small business.
Most small business owners don’t need more information. They don’t need– What they need is practical strategy, and they need accountability, and they need the right people around them. If you’re looking around your network right now and there aren’t people at your level or above, or you’re running with a bunch of negative Nancys, that’s not who you need in your circle if you want to grow your small business.
The Foureva Circle membership and the Six Figure Circle provided by Foureva Media, that’s the right kind of room if you wanna grow. You can strengthen your brand, you can grow your business, and you can get the support that you need to move your business forward. And when you have a strong brand, it builds trust, revenue, and you’ll make a real impact.
Fourevamedia.com, that’s the QR code on the screen. They can talk to you about those two different circles that they run, and they can help you evaluate the importance of having the right people around you. Change your circle, change your business with Foureva Media, partners at the conference, QR code on the screen.
Check out Jamar and the team. Thanks to them for being a sponsor of the show. Teresa, good morning. Great to see you. AI story of the day is a simple one. Are we forgetting how to think? Are we using AI so much that we can’t think critically any longer? I think we know that’s true. I don’t wanna say that’s true.
I’m, I use AI so much. I use AI so much. I don’t want it to be true. But thinking is a muscle, and I’m not thinking as much as I used to now that I have a thought partner in Claude.
So are we thinking less? Is it hurting us? The numbers say that forty-six percent of Gen Z workers are relying on AI, and they’re saying it’s making them not as sharp. Half of employees said that they are too dependent on using AI at work. So we’re already acknowledging that we’re using it too much, and we’re self-reporting that it’s making us not as sharp as we used to be.
Have you experienced that? Uh, l- in the chat, have you experienced that? Have you caught yourself delegating the deep thought? “Oh, I gotta do this talk, you know. What should be in this talk? You know, hey, Claude, um, what should be in this talk?” Are you doing that? I’m not even judging you. I’m just curious. Have you caught yourself doing that yet?
I, I have, not about the talks, but I have handed off early creation and big picture thinking to Claude to get my brain going, to help me, um, get started on a project. I’m not giving it A to Z. And as I was thinking about it, I’m like, “Oh, that’s not really good, Pat. Boy, that’s, that’s being kind of lazy,” and I started getting down on myself.
But then I thought, “Now wait a minute. Just hold on.” If you’ve heard me talk about AI at all, you’ve heard me say over and over again, AI is your junior employee. To me, if I sit down with Claude and have a conversation, ’cause I talk with it all day, about what I’m thinking and what might be and what do you think about this, it’s exactly what I would do if Mitchell and I were colleagues at a workplace.
Hey Mitchell, can we talk? I need to pick your brain. Can we have a conversation about the thing? Get on the whiteboard, do the stuff. Is that bad for us? Does that make us not as sharp? I don’t think so. So, and he says, “I think it’s how you use it.” I think you’re right on that, Mitchell, that you can use it in a way that is abdicating your deep thought, and it’s making you intellectually lazy.
But I gotta tell you, as a coworker, as a colleague, as a thought partner, man, it is crushing it to me. Maybe we can just boil it down to the idea that you can collaborate with it, and you can use it as a thought partner. But when we start abdicating our judgment, that’s where we might get onto a slippery slope and end up where we’re not as sharp as we used to be.
So let’s have a conversation. Let’s come up with some ideas. Here are some things to do. I think we should do that one. You retain that part, maybe that’s a way that we can stay sharp and stay on top of it. Ah, Alex, great to see you. DJ Amp in the house. “It definitely helps me brainstorm or does tasks I find mundane, but I wouldn’t say I use it wholesale not to think.”
Absolutely. Great to see you, Alex. Thanks for tuning in. Yeah, that’s where I think we’re going, and I think we’re gonna have to fight that instinct, or at least that bad habit. It’s not even an instinct. We’re gonna have to fight the bad habit of just turning over the way that we think to the AI partners, because they’re gonna keep on getting really good.
What’s coming next is going to be, uh, unprompted action, and I don’t mean it’s gonna start sending emails from your email account. It’s not gonna be that. It’s going to be agents who are acting as your director of ops that will come to you and say, “Hey, you haven’t emailed Teresa back like you should have, so I’ve drafted this email.
Okay to send?” “Hey, it’s time to start the renewal conversations with partner about the thing. Uh, I’ve drafted it. Okay to send?” Like, that’s where it’s going, and this autonomous decision-making is coming, so we’re gonna have to retain the judgment because it’s going to be a problem if we don’t. Fascinating conversations, and I cannot wait to see where this goes.
Stay tuned to the show. We’ll keep on doing the AI story of the day, and we’ll keep you thinking about what’s happening with AI. Something really fun happened this morning. It is Thursday the 10th, and I got up this morning and went over to the venue for our conference that’s happening next Tuesday. And have you ever bought a house before or moved into a new apartment before,
and you walk in there for the first time when you know it’s yours? Like, I remember getting the keys to the house that I’m in now, and you get the keys and you go in and you just see possibility. Just possibility is everywhere. It’s like, this is gonna be awesome. That happened this morning. Went over to the venue, talked to the catering manager and looked all around and confirmed a bunch of details and I just…
He, he walked off and went to go find somebody about a thing and I just had a moment. I’m in the place where the big beautiful stage is gonna be. Over there we’re gonna do this, and over there we’re gonna do this and I’m just there and I’m just like
Yep. Yep. Next Tuesday, it begins. SBOC 26, right there’s the QR code. About 125 small business owners getting together, gonna be in that room, building relationships, learning from one another, and getting ready for the small business event of the year. So I am just… Man, I am on fire now. I’m so glad I went over there, ’cause these last couple of days are a bunch of detail work, as you can imagine, to get everything ready to go, and that was the enthusiasm that I needed.
So super psyched about the event that’s happening next week at the Sheraton Milwaukee Brookfield. Last chance for tickets. Seriously, this QR code won’t even be on the screen next week because all the hay will be in the barn. Inside the Small Business Owners Community, we’ve had some fun, fun stuff happening as well.
Two new members in the last 24 hours, Ben from St. George, Utah, and Ashley from McDonough, Georgia, both joined the community, so welcome to the community, Ben and Ashley. And today at one o’clock, we are going to perform the signature event in the community. Every week, we talk about what are you working on and what are you working on next?
And as a group, we talk about those projects in something we call the Idea Slam. Everybody’s got something on their list today that you gotta get done, and almost everybody has something on their list that they could really use a second opinion on. That’s what the Idea Slam is all about, a room full of business owners offering feedback to help you move your business forward.
Because nobody showed you how to run a small business. This is the place where we’re gonna figure out how to run it together. Every Thursday, we do the Idea Slam. So today, one o’clock, it’s going to happen. Then tomorrow, Friday, four o’clock, we do the Friday Finish Line. That’s where we get together.
Usually, we have a cocktail. HR has left the building, and we get to reflect on all of our wins for the week. If you’re out there building your small business all by yourself, you don’t have to do it. We want you to join the Small Business Owners Community for $9 a month. That’s all it costs to be a member, and we encourage you to help us work with you on your business, because it’s your dream.
Don’t grow it alone. That is the tagline. And here is the community link. So we’d love to have you join from wherever you are. If you own a business, become a member of the community. We’d love to have you. Here’s what’s happening next week on the show. Doing a show on Monday the 14th, but the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th, no show, because we’ll be doing the conference.
So join us on Monday for one more episode of Businessing with Pat Miller, then the conference will be on the air the rest of the week. I’m Pat Miller, founder of the Small Business Owners Community, host of the show. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you could do us a favor before we split. Have you gone to Apple Podcasts and subscribed?
Or gone to our YouTube page and subscribed? We’re kind of on a drive right now to get more five-star reviews on Apple. So if you’d be willing, can you hop over to Apple Podcasts and give us a review? That would be awesome. All right, that wraps up for today. Thank you for that. We will see you on the air here next Monday at 11:00 AM.
Until then, go sell something. Take care.