Welcome back to the Small Business Summary: This week I learned that where your work can really affect how you work. Today, I’m writing the newsletter from my first-floor office with a window. Bye Basement! Let's freaking go!

In this week’s episode:

• Sales Room: Grow Faster with a Join Venture…Learn All About ‘Em

• Marketing Basics: How to Identify Your Target Market

• Tweet of the week: Keep. Moving. Forward.

• SBOC Conference Update: Why are we talking about BURNOUT?

The Sales Goldmine Has Been Here All Along

I see a common theme with Small Business Owners: You enjoy creating your products and helping your customers, but you don't enjoy the effort it takes to sell and attract new clients. In June, I’m leading the Small Business Owners Community on a 30-Day Sales Sprint. The Sprint began with a series of exercises to get ready for an intense selling period. I went through the exercises, too…here are four things that I learned about my sales (or lack of sales) activity:

The Work’s Working

I carry a perceptual scoreboard for money in my head at all times. It’s a feeling of how I think it’s going versus where I want to be. My feeling was that things were “just ok,” and I really needed to kick my sales activity into high gear in order to “catch up.” It turns out that after analyzing my 2025 revenue, I’m ahead of plan and way ahead of last year. That’s NOT a flex, but rather an invitation for you to check YOUR numbers. You may think you’re behind but you’re probably in a similar spot. I default to “behind,” or “meh,” even when I’m right on plan for where I want to be. Check your numbers and see if that holds true for you, too.

I’m Wasting Hours on Work That Doesn’t Matter

After reviewing their financial picture, I had the group do a time audit. Boy, was that eye opening. Over 50% of my time was spent on administration in the business and I was spending six times as much time on admin as I was on content creation - NO WONDER I COULDN’T FIND TIME TO START MY PODCAST?!?!? The other eye opener was that I was spending 20+ hours per month in email. Disgusting. FWIW, I’ve found a tech stack that has solved email for me. I’ll share it in a future Summary newsletter - but, WOW, it works. By delegating a few things and dropping some low-performing tasks nobody will miss, I’ve opened up time for sales and my new podcast - coming soon.

I Scheduled Everything—Except Revenue

Imagine going through high school expecting to learn chemistry and you didn’t have it on your schedule. That’s what was happening with sales in my business - I didn’t have ANY time allocated each week! Embarrassing. I’ve now got five hours each week hard wired on my calendar and protected from meetings. It gives me space to reach out to prospects and close deals. It feels like I’m cheating against my other priorities when in reality it’s giving me the time I need for one-on-ones with prospects, outreach, and follow-ups. Do you have time on your calendar (not your to-do list) for sales?

Turns Out, I’m Sitting on a Goldmine

In the exercise, we created our target list and I had more qualified leads than I thought. As I looked through past clients, power partners, and qualified businesses in my network, the list kept growing and growing. You’re in the same boat. You’re carrying a mixture of inactivity, fear, and doubt that stops you from asking someone who is perfect for your product for money. What if you got over that and just asked for the business?

Enough Planning. Make the Damn Sale.

The community and I are now deep into the actual sales activity where we're reaching out to clients, offering them the opportunity to work with us, and asking for the business. By the end of the month, we'll have actual data to see if the sales sprint helped our members make more money. But, it helped me reflect on the activity of sales and how I can make it a part of my daily work.

It's been a great exercise, and I’ve decided to keep the 30-day sales sprint up inside the SBOC as a class that’s ready for you when you join. We’re open to small business owners only (no managers, business development folks, or employees) and we specialize in helping driven, borderline-obsessed solopreneurs and small business owners break through their plateaus and keep growing. This group is right for you if you’re looking for a place to be surrounded by peers that want to win as badly as you do. We’re not playing business. We’re building our dream and supporting one another as we do it. It’s unlike any other group and I’ve got the door wide open for you with a 2-week free trial. Just click here and let’s get to work.

TWEET OF THE WEEK

Behind the Scenes of #SBOC25: Burnout

Burnout is evil, and it can ruin your business. At the SBOC conference, we're going to tackle it head-on with a burnout check from Dana Cox. If you've ever suffered from business burnout, you can look back at it and see all the signs. But if you haven't or haven't had it in a while, you may not notice that everything feels like a chore, the easy stuff takes longer, clients feel like a hassle, and the last thing you want to do is try to grow the business that you're beginning to resent so much.

On the first morning of the first day of the conference, we will stop everything and look inward about how we're feeling, how we're performing, and if we're stuck, how to get moving again. Dana does a killer presentation on burnout and it's something you absolutely cannot miss, especially if everything feels a little heavy right now.

The rest of the first day will do the diagnostic on all parts of your business:

• The 5 Types of Wealth with Sahil Bloom

• Delegation/Productivity with Talmar Anderson

• Networking: Change Your Circle, Change Your Life with Jamar Jones

• Imposter Syndrome: The Impasta! Confidence Lunch with Kate Carter and Ariel Kopac. It's a fun way to take on imposter syndrome so we can open all the doors, step into the light, and build a business that we love.

Everything that I do at the SBOC conference has a reason, and I've done a really poor job of explaining some of them. In this space I'm going to begin telling the stories about why you need to be with us. This conference WILL chance the course of your business.

I’d love to see you there…

BUILD YOUR RECORD YEAR AT #SBOC25
Presented by Horicon Bank
September 16-19, 2025
Brookfield, WI

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

Thanks for checking out this week’s Small Business Summary newsletter.
Now…GO SELL SOMETHING!

-Pat