Welcome back to the Small Business Summary… The newsletter continues to evolve with more of what’s clicking and less of what’s not. As always, your questions, comments and sarcastic remarks are welcome.

In this week’s episode:

• Sales Room: How to Plan Your Sales Cycles

• Level Up: How to Deal with an Angry Customer

• ICYMI: ‘25 Small Business Owners Community Conference Announcement

• Final Say Survey: Is your next vacation and mental checkout locked in?

Small Business Owners Community Virtual Summit Presented by Horicon Bank 

How did you choose the customer that you serve? Last Tuesday, during the SBOC Virtual Summit, I interviewed 22x bestselling author Seth Godin and he shared how choosing your customer chooses your future. If you haven’t put intentional thought into the ideal, perfect, dream customer to serve, you need to listen up.

Too often, we take whatever customers we can get. But, if we are more intentional we can choose a better, more fulfilling, and more PROFITABLE future for our business.

Why do you serve who you serve? I bet there’s a part of you that wants to serve “bigger” or “more valuable” (read: expensive) clients but YOU are not convinced you are good enough to do so.

In this short clip, Seth explains the concept and gives a great example. The entire SBOC Virtual Summit is available for our members in the community. Perhaps today is the time you’ll take our no risk 2-week free trial so you can go from frustrated and alone to supported and surrounded by the entrepreneurs that are putting collaboration over competition every single day.

Thank you to all of our sponsors for the Summit: Horicon Bank, Money Masters, Magnolia Tax, Miles Away Signature Visa, Athena Legal Solutions, and Professional Photographers of America 

TWEET OF THE WEEK

ICYMI: Announcement
BUILD YOUR RECORD YEAR AT #SBOC25
September 16-19, 2025
Brookfield, WI

The 5th Annual Small Business Owners Community Conference presented by Horicon Bank is leaning into the moment by focusing on what matters: Revenue. This year, we’re addressing all of the inputs that make you money: mindset, rates, sales technique, time, meaning, business development and more. The economy is a little bumpy at the moment and below you’ll see one economist predicting a 90% chances of a recession.

If the economy went south, are you just going to roll over and take it?
Or, are you going to fight for your dream? I thought so.

With that theme in mind, check out our unbelievable faculty this year:

• Jesse Cole - Founder Savannah Bananas - Putting Your Customer First

• Carl Gould - Back by Popular Demand! - BizDev Done Right

• Sahil Bloom - NYT Bestselling Author - Meaning, Purpose and Money

• Pat Miller - (yeah, me!) - Quit Charging Too Little, a Workshop to Raise Rates

• Precious L. Williams - Returning to Host the 2nd Annual SBOC Awards

• And much more…

The first week of ticket sales was awesome! All of our VIP tickets are gone (we started a waiting list in case a second session opens) and our general tickets are already 50% sold out!

See the full lineup and get your ticket here: https://event.smallbusinesscommunity.com/25conference

A HUGE thank you to our major sponsors: Horicon Bank, Money Masters, Athena Legal Solutions, Magnolia Tax, and Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative

The Small Business Summary is sponsored by:

NEW: I’m SO excited to release our custom GPT specifically for Small Business Owners! Get all the features of the new ChatGPT 4.1 customized just for Small Business Owners like you with the Small Business GPT. I’ve been working on this product for months and our latest upgrades are just incredible:

• All of the SBOC Content and my podcasts uploaded and indexed for quick search

• Custom onboarding sequence for SBGPT to quickly learn about you and your business for optimal answers

• Privacy: Your data stays your data

• Top notch Image Generation

• And, it’s only $15/month (vs. $20 for Chat GPT) during our beta test launch.

Final Say Survey:

Bonus points if you hit reply and share with me where your next vacation will be!

Adios!

Pat