Businessing with Pat Miller

On today's Businessing, Pat connected two seemingly unrelated news stories to unlock a competitive advantage hiding in plain sight. Story one: airline CEOs are begging Congress to reopen DHS after 50,000 TSA agents went unpaid and security lines ballooned past two hours at some airports, right as 171 million people prepare to fly this spring. Story two: new research shows customers aren't just expecting more, they're expecting it faster. The throughline? Americans hate waiting more than almost anything else.

Drawing on 30 years of serving the public, Pat made the case that you don't need to improve your product to improve the experience. You just need to deliver it faster. He shared two real examples of turning around what would have been three-week projects in 48 hours using AI, and both times the speed alone got the client's attention.

The practical takeaways: audit your SOPs for unnecessary steps, batch similar work together (a tip from Julie Miller Davis), automate what's repeatable, and challenge the old belief that making clients wait signals value.

The AI Story of the Day was driven by a live poll revealing 75% of viewers use AI to write their content, but opinions split evenly on whether they judge others for doing the same. Pat compared AI writing to wearing a toupee: everyone's doing it, and everyone can tell. His fix? Feed your AI tool transcripts of your actual voice so the writing starts sounding like you.

Idea Slam covered two questions: top business book recommendations (Atomic Habits led the pack) and what single-member LLCs need to know about insurance (call a professional, don't guess).

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On this St. Patrick’s Day episode, Pat Miller connects the holiday’s theme of luck to something small business owners can actually control. Drawing from Sahil Bloom’s keynote at the 2025 SBOC conference, Pat breaks down the concept of luck surface area and how daily actions put you in position for your next big break. He debuts the Sale Team app, a free tool that gamifies daily sales habits with streaks, leaderboards, and a communal bell-ringing celebration when you close a deal. The AI segment covers NVIDIA’s Jensen announcing NemoClaw, a security-hardened version of the Open Claw agent framework that could put AI employees in every small business. And in the Idea Slam, Pat shares his naming framework from 20 years in radio: lead with transformation, use Cookie Monster language, lean on alliteration, and twist culturally familiar phrases. Plus news on gas prices, Cuba’s uprising, and private equity snapping up small businesses.

Your rates aren't stuck because of imposter syndrome. They're stuck because you don't have enough people in line wanting what you sell.

On today's show, Pat breaks down why raising your rates is a demand problem, not a pricing problem. He walks through the exact playbook for heating up demand: mining your CRM, asking for referrals, running webinars, and using Claude Cowork to generate a scored lead list in 10 minutes flat.

Also on the show:

1. NVIDIA's Jensen Huang keynote today may reveal Nemo Claw, an autonomous AI agent that lets the chipmaker double-dip in hardware AND software
2. AI tools are getting culturally nuanced (Claude said "instead of dunking on it" and Pat's brain broke a little)
3. Idea Slam: CRM alternatives for solo operators stuck on HubSpot
4. Idea Slam: How to spot bad business advice before you get Guru'd
5. Show & Tell: Pat's new interactive calculator that proves the ROI of not building alone

Businessing is the daily live show for small business owners who want their business to actually work for their life. Real conversations about hiring, marketing, time, AI, and whatever you're working on right now.

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Pat Miller wraps the week with an interactive lead segment that stops the scroll and starts the mirror. Using the viral diamond mine meme as a launching point, Pat walks the audience step by step through a goal clarity exercise: write down your goal with a measurable number, document how long you’ve been at it, list the resources you’ve invested, and answer honestly — have you been giving it your all? Pat shares his own target: 1,000 listeners per episode of Businessing, currently sitting at about 200 after two months. The kicker: what if you’re digging toward something nobody wants?

In the news, the Iran war enters day 12. Gas prices hit $3.58 with analysts predicting $4 within a week and $5 diesel. The FBI reveals a memo about Iranian drones potentially targeting California and the Academy Awards from container ships. Forecasters say 2026 could be the hottest year on record, and a monster snowstorm is about to dump feet of snow on Wisconsin this weekend.

Pat revisits his tax refund strategy from a month ago: refunds are 20% bigger than last year, putting an extra $65 billion into consumer pockets with an average refund of $3,800. His advice: offer annual pricing to let clients pay off their bill with that lump sum.

The live word cloud Idea Slam asks what business owners are avoiding. The top answers: sleep, boundaries, overwhelm, and short form content. Pat riffs on each — sleep gets fixed by going to bed on time, boundaries are your ability to say no, and short form content is almost non-negotiable for reach. The AI story of the day: a startup paying $100/hour to be mean to chatbots about memory failures. Pat’s bumper sticker pitch: Be a Jerk. Save the Planet. AI Installation Groups kick off March 25, and the SBOC Conference has 110 tickets remaining.

CNN ran a story this morning claiming the Iran war is "squeezing" US small businesses through gas prices. The headline was written before the first interview ever happened. As a 22-year broadcast veteran who's supervised newsrooms and sat in assignment meetings, Pat Miller knows exactly how this works — and he's done being quiet about it.

But the gas price math isn't even the real story here.

The real story is HOW the media talks about small business owners. Every single time. The sad music. The sympathetic reporter standing outside a coffee shop. "Times are tough for small businesses." They talk to one owner, find the saddest quote they can, and suddenly all 33 million of us are helpless victims of the economy who need politicians and Fortune 500 companies to save us.

"Oh, those poor mom and pop shops on Main Street."

Like we're uneducated. Like we have no idea how the world works. Like we couldn't make it in corporate America so we're out here fumbling around in our little businesses hoping someone will help us survive.

They never cover Microsoft "passing costs on to customers." They never interview a Fortune 500 CEO about how tough things are. But a cupcake shop raises prices by 50 cents? Front page crisis.

The media has one frame for small business: victim. And it's wrong. It's condescending. And it's actively hurting business owners who internalize that narrative instead of fixing what's actually broken.

We eat what we kill. No safety net. No paid vacation. No company match. We are the backbone of this economy and we deserve to be covered like it.

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Two massive announcements on today’s show: the 2026 SBOC Conference waitlist is officially open (only 125 tickets at $399), and Pat launches AI Installation Groups — a six-month program to help you actually implement AI in your business. Plus: Microsoft is partnering with Anthropic to bring Claude inside Microsoft 365, Ticketmaster gets slapped with a $280M antitrust settlement, the DHS shutdown is creating three-hour TSA lines, and Arnold is coming back as Conan. In the Idea Slam, Pat coaches a personal trainer drowning in 78-hour weeks and a business owner struggling with a Fiverr VA. And Pat debuts a brand new word for those days when nothing works: entremanure.

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Pat’s back from a week off with three big stories: the war in Iran claims a seventh US casualty, daylight saving time wrecks his entire tech stack, and Anthropic drops an AI labor study that changes how you should think about opportunity.

The lead story breaks down a graph showing the massive gap between what AI CAN do in your industry and what businesses are ACTUALLY doing. Pat argues that gap is your money — and he’s launching AI Installation Groups to help you claim it.

Plus: Microsoft drops Copilot Cowork, Pat answers two Idea Slam questions (spend your extra hour on sales, never stop creating video content), and a Vegas story that proves bad decisions sometimes pay off.

TIMESTAMPS: [00:00] Welcome back + SBOC theme song [03:30] Iran war update: 7th US casualty, oil prices, what’s next [07:00] Daylight saving time tech meltdown [11:30] LEAD: Anthropic AI study — the opportunity gap [16:00] AI Installation Groups launch announcement [18:30] BREAKING: Microsoft Copilot Cowork [20:00] Idea Slam: Where to spend your extra hour [22:00] Idea Slam: What to tell your 2020 self [26:00] Vegas trip story [32:00] SBOC updates + Lake Country chapter

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Businessing with Pat Miller is small business’s daily live show. Solving small business problems so you can be more profitable, with less stress, and run a modern small business.

Pat finally reveals the full Fridays Off framework — the six pillars that took him from a five-day grind to a three-day weekend every single week since July 2025. Three pillars are personal (strategic quitting, delegation & automation, mindset & boundaries) and three are business execution (offer & audience clarity, lead generation, and asking for money every day).

This isn't theory. This is the actual playbook Pat followed, broken down step by step so you can start building toward your own version of Fridays Off — whether that means a full day off, half-days, or a completely redesigned schedule.

In the news: Nvidia reported $39.3 billion in Q4 revenue (enough to open 872 Chick-fil-As per day). GLP-1 drugs are in a pricing war — Zepbound dropped 72% and Wegovy is now $199/month for new patients. And Pat's innocence was shattered when he learned what new car smell actually is.

Plus two Idea Slams: what to delegate first (and what to delegate last), and whether you need a new phone number when you move out of state. And a closing story about email apnea that you'll never be able to unhear.

Sponsors: GenHead (genhead.com) and Enji (enji.co/sboc)

Your best clients already trust you. They already pay you. So why are you out chasing new ones when you could be making more from the people who already love what you do?

Today Pat walks through a thought exercise that changes the camera angle on what you sell — inspired by a Stanford breakthrough that reimagined how vaccines work. Instead of optimizing the same deliverable, you identify WHY your clients buy and build premium offerings around that deeper need.

Travel advisors, tax pros, event planners, speakers — Pat breaks down real examples of how every service business can add a premium tier without adding headcount.

Plus: Trump's State of the Union dropped a nugget that could mean free money for solo operators — a 401k program with government matching for self-employed people. Pat's tax guy says it could be a game changer.

And in the Idea Slam, Alison Ver Halen brings her new Sales & Marketing Alignment Workshop. Pat and the community help her find the halftime speech positioning, build a football metaphor, and land on an ownable idea that makes CEOs say yes.

Sponsors: GenHead (genhead.com) and Enji (enji.co/sboc)

$650 billion is being poured into AI development this year — more than a billion dollars a day. Nobody knows where it’s going, but everybody’s betting on it. Pat breaks down what he heard called the "Jump Ball Economy" and what it means for small business owners who need to move now or get left behind.

Plus: GenHead president Nikki Lee calls in live to talk about AI adoption, Pat demos building software with Claude in under an hour, and Naval’s viral advice to “live in the future.”

Also: State of the Union preview (as a messaging guy, Pat loves it), remote work is the #1 job perk at 85%, and two Idea Slams — how to actually win at networking events and what to say when friends and family ask for free work.

Sponsors: Genhead (genhead.com) — AI-powered marketing for small business. Enji (enji.co/sboc) — marketing strategy made simple.

Businessing with Pat Miller airs live Mon–Thu at 11am CT. Join the Small Business Owners Community: smallbusinesscommunity.com