Come down the ladder a little bit

Everybody wants to land the five to twenty million dollar company, and almost nobody wants to do the little stuff.

I caught myself doing this on a call this week. We were talking about scraping and local businesses and all the ways you can help people right now, and my brain went straight to the big deal. Like if we could just land that mid size company that needs a huge buildout and a ton of implementation, we'd be set.

And hey, if that shows up, awesome. I'll take it!

But I think a lot of us should come down the ladder a little bit.

There are millions of small companies out there that just need little things done. They don't need a full AI overhaul or a custom dashboard with seventeen integrations.

Stuff like getting the crew to take pictures after every job, setting up a simple way for happy customers to leave a review, or geotagging their photos on Google (most owners have no idea that's even a thing). It's small, but it makes a big difference for a company that's been running off paper and memory for years.

A buddy on the same call said a lot of these little businesses can't even get a website that says what they do at the top of the page. That's where a lot of these owners are at right now, and that's a real opportunity.

I think those of us who are deep in AI get so pumped about agents and scrapers and big builds that we skip right past the level where most of the need (and most of the money) actually is.

Most small business owners just want someone to fix the handful of boring things that are holding them back. And they'll happily pay someone to keep it running so they don't have to think about it.

So if you've been chasing the big client and it's not happening, try going down a rung or two. In my experience the owners who need the simplest help are usually the ones who stick around the longest.

Here's your homework:

• Write down three little things you could do for a local business this month without building anything new.
• Pick one trade in your town and find five owners with a thin Google profile or barely any reviews.
• Offer to fix one small thing for free for one of them, just to learn where it hurts.
• Pay attention to what they thank you for.

I'm still going to chase a big one now and then lol, but I'm making a point to spend more time on the little stuff this month. I'll share how it goes.

Stay in the fight, Kevin