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

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