Solving small business problems so you can be more profitable, with less stress, and run a modern small business. It’s the last day of April, and Pat opens with the show’s new daily ritual: positivity, gratitude, the distraction of the day, and the one task you have to finish before you stand up from your desk.

Today’s distraction is performative busyness. Pat calls it a suit of armor. When somebody asks how the business is going and you say “I’m working really hard,” that’s not an answer. Nobody gets paid because they’re busy.

In the news: gas at $4.25 a gallon has crossed into cultural-tipping-point territory, and Pat shows you two ways to turn it into a promotion that cuts through. Then Big Tech Q1 earnings — Alphabet at $62.6B in profit, Meta at $26B — and the $650 billion that four companies are pouring into AI infrastructure this year. That’s more than it cost to build the entire U.S. highway system. Follow the money.

Two AI stories: 82% of small businesses are using AI, AI agents are handling 80–90% of customer inquiries, and the big tools are raising prices to $30 a month. Pat’s reframe: that’s a personnel line item, not a tech expense.

Plus: Mike Michalowicz on the show next Tuesday May 5 at 11 AM CT, Carolyn Jahnke joining the SBOC Conference for a partnerships session, ticket sales kick off May 11–13, and Stephanie Kern’s Sticker of the Month Club is officially live.

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Sponsor: https://www.genhead.com

A 110-person company just lost access to Claude. Cold cut off. And it got Pat thinking...what would happen to your business if your AI got taken away tomorrow?

This episode goes deep on the AI dependency trap most small business owners are sleepwalking into. Pat shares why building your business on someone else's software is starting to look like the late-2010s Facebook follower mistake, and what to watch as open-source models start to compete. Plus: Taco Tom from G2 Insurance on cyber coverage and the questions every owner should be asking, the new SBOC 2026 Professional Presence Workshop with Captain Cathy Trimboli and Rebekah Bryan, and the device Pat is buying to break his Twitter habit.

In this episode:

00:00 — May the 4th open and welcome

01:30 — Today's sponsor: Money Masters Bookkeeping

03:00 — Daily warm-up: positivity, gratitude, and your #1 task

07:00 — Distraction of the Day: the Brick (and Pat's Twitter problem)

12:00 — News: Iran, gas prices, and Spirit Airlines bankruptcy

15:00 — Kentucky Derby: 23-1 longshot and the first female trainer in 152 years

18:00 — SBOC 2026 Conference intro

19:00 — Guest: Taco Tom from G2 Insurance on cyber coverage

30:00 — AI Story of the Day: what if you lose access to Claude?

36:00 — Money Masters Bookkeeping spotlight

39:00 — SBOC 2026: the new Professional Presence Workshop with Captain Cathy Trimboli & Rebekah Bryan

46:00 — Stephanie Kern's Sticker of the Month Club

48:00 — Tomorrow on the show: Mike Michalowicz on The Money Habit

Resources mentioned:

- The Brick — focus device that blocks apps on your phone

- Tom Goman, G2 Insurance — business and cyber insurance

- Money Masters Bookkeeping (Barbara Faucet) — https://moneymastersforbiz.com

- Captain Cathy Trimboli — command presence workshop

- Rebekah Bryan — professional stylist, the 90/10 Rule and Red Shoe Theory

- Stephanie Kern, Vanderblooming Creative — Sticker of the Month Club

- Mike Michalowicz — The Money Habit (tomorrow's guest, 11am CT)

- Nikki at Genhead — open source AI models for small business

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👥 Small Business Owners Community: https://smallbusinesscommunity.com

#SmallBusiness #Entrepreneurship #PatMiller #AIForSmallBusiness #BusinessInsurance #Productivity

Pat had a moment in the car driving home from a chamber event yesterday. He'd just spent the afternoon with a room full of business owners in Fond du Lac, and they all said the same thing he's heard for 750+ Idea Slams: I'm behind. I'm overwhelmed. I feel like I'm failing. So today, the show changes. From now on, Businessing is the daily meeting for small business owners. Every show opens with three things. One: positivity and gratitude in the chat. Two: the distraction of the day. Three: the one task that has to get done by 5pm today. Then tomorrow at 11, Pat looks into the camera with full dad energy and asks, "Did you do it?"

Sponsored by Genhead - Genhead.com

Episode: Businessing with Pat Miller — Wednesday, April 29, 2026

What we covered: Why Pat missed yesterday's show (Fond du Lac Chamber Idea Slam) The new show format: Positivity & Gratitude, Distraction of the Day, Number One Task The five faces of inaction News: UAE leaves OPEC, gas prices spike AI: OpenAI's phone vision, half the internet is bots Conference: Steve Glynn announced, tickets available

Resources

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PatMillerFridaysOff

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/businessing-with-pat-miller/id1870663109

Newsletter: https://fridaysoffnewsletter.com

A British marathoner just broke the 2-hour barrier. The four-minute mile of long-distance running. And every runner in the world is suddenly asking the same question: "Maybe I can too?"

Pat takes that energy and aims it at every small business owner watching.

Five questions you don't want to answer honestly:

→ How many hours of an eight-hour day are you actually working?

→ Could you make an extra thousand bucks this week if your life depended on it?

→ Could you turn what you know into a digital product for $20?

→ If Mark Cuban bought your business, would he do better than you?

→ What would you do with 20 hours a week back?

You're not going as hard as you can. Neither am I.

Plus: Why Pat is putting a recurring meeting on his calendar with Claude. DeepSeek's new V4 Pro and V4 Flash open-source AI models. The SBOC Conference 2-Hour AI Super Session announcement (tickets May 13). And Kellogg putting toys back in cereal boxes.

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Want to come on the show for an Idea Slam? Reach out anytime. We brainstorm on your behalf, live, no net.

It's your dream. Don't grow it alone.®

Thursday's Businessing opened with Pat walking into the studio fresh off an hour outside. 70 degrees in Milwaukee. An AI Installation Group meeting behind him. A mountain of work ahead. The conversation that followed was the best kind of course correction.

Consultant Michael Rampolla of Fortum Advisors joined Pat (on hotel lobby wifi, then literally outside) to unpack why small business owners work so hard and still miss. Michael's core diagnosis: we have a bias for action. Feeling stuck feels bad, so we move. We move before we check what problem we're actually trying to solve. And we end up running hard in the wrong direction.

The fix is uncomfortable. Sit with the stuck. Check the assumptions under your beliefs. Ask how do you know. Use an AI like Claude to play devil's advocate on your thinking before you commit real time and money. Track lead indicators you can control, not lag indicators like revenue that only tell you the verdict after it's too late. And surround yourself with people authorized to tell you you're wrong.

The AI story of the day: Google Workspace Intelligence is live, with AI now integrated across Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Calendar, including a new inbox that auto-sorts mail. For SBOC 26, Pat announced strategic growth and SEO expert Myrna Dyramy as Wednesday's third speaker, joining Mike Michalowicz and Taylor Cusick Holman. 115 tickets remain against a 235-person waitlist.

The weird story of the week: Northwestern University has successfully printed artificial neurons on plastic that fire like real brain cells, opening the door to restoring vision, movement, and speech. Pat closed with his usual note about the NFL Draft, the importance of keggers, and zero regrets.

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🤝 SBOC Community: https://smallbusinesscommunity.com

🎬 This episode on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/snVnycpHo0Y

🎙️ Universal podcast link: https://businessing.captivate.fm/listen

Guest: Michael Rampolla, Fortum Advisors — team@fortumadvisors.com

Three AI wins you can install this week. That's the show.

Jason Kolins of Kolins Intelligence spent years running AI at Fortune 500 companies. Then he brought the playbook home to Cedarburg, Wisconsin and started helping solo shops and small teams without the Fortune 500 price tag. He came on the air with three wins any business owner can deploy right now:

1. Stop writing everything from scratch. One business owner went from 45 minutes on morning customer questions to 5 minutes with a single prompt template. 10+ hours a week, back.

2. Look like a bigger business than you are. AI doesn't care if you're a one-person shop or a 500-person company. Same tools. Different budget.

3. Never let a lead go cold. HVAC, plumbers, pest control... if you miss a call, you lose money. An auto text-back setup is the fix.

Also: Why "cringe is the new cool." ChatGPT Image 2.0 and the branding arms race. And the first SBOC Conference speaker is announced: Taylor Cusick Hollman of Enng on lead generation.

Guest: Jason Kolins, Kolins Intelligence — kolinsintelligence.com

Links:

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👥 SBOC: https://smallbusinesscommunity.com

Do you care that the number one song in the country was written and performed by AI? Today on Businessing, Pat Miller unpacks the synthetic content tsunami... including new data showing less than half of new podcasts released yesterday were likely made by humans... and makes the case that real-life gatherings are about to become the most valuable asset a business owner can own.

Then: the lead story. Pat put the show on TikTok and watched the comments go brutal in 24 hours. Bald jokes. Boomer jokes. The worst stuff people could think up. Then the algorithm found his people. The lesson from two decades in broadcasting: when you introduce yourself to an unfamiliar audience, the first wave is almost always negative. Get uncomfortable anyway.

Plus... the Idea Slam pulled from last night's Milwaukee SBOC meetup: how to land your first client using Know, Like, Trust. News update on the Iran ceasefire, $4 gas, and the weird economy where consumer confidence is at COVID-lows but spending keeps climbing. And a major SBOC Conference announcement: Mike Michalowicz is the keynote, with an Idea Slam Lunch sponsored by Taco Tom from G2 Insurance.

Subscribe and come back tomorrow... Jason Collins joins to share three wins with AI for small business owners.

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Claude Design just launched, and Pat demos it live, rebuilding the ugly AI Installation Group landing page in real time. The insight: if your website looks homemade, your prices look homemade. The tools for small business owners to look professional just got a lot better and a lot cheaper.

Also on today's show: the SBOC 26 keynote reveal. Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First and The Money Habit, headlines the September 15–17 conference in Brookfield, Wisconsin. In person this time. Tickets are $399, the lowest Pat has ever set them, and go on sale May 13 (May 11 for SBOC members).

And the Marines rappel from a helicopter to take an Iranian cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz while Pat spent the weekend making four trips to the hardware store to fix his lawnmower. Hashtag - not a marine.

The SBOC quarterly meetup is TONIGHT, 4–6 PM at the Technology Innovation Center in Wauwatosa. Come say hi.

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🔗 Join SBOC: https://smallbusinesscommunity.com