Frazer LLP, a $20.2 million Anaheim CPA firm, had a cybersecurity incident on March 25, 2025. Its breach notice reached the California Attorney General's list on October 16, 2026 -- 570 days later. Four other firms holding client Social Security numbers did the same thing this fall. The hack wasn't the expensive decision. The silence was.

I've just rebuilt my site at reddogstrategies.co to reflect what I offer now. It went live late last week. Shameless plug -- please go check it out and tell me what you think. And if you have an owner-operated business, check out the Free AI Visibility Score tool I offer. Before the rebuild, I ran the audit on myself. Apparently 25 years of helping eBay, HP and LinkedIn tell their stories did not exempt me from checking whether my own was being told correctly. Fair enough.

Every owner-operator has a (moment of truth with customers). The dues increase the membership rejects. The schedule change the hygienists push back on. The loss isn't the problem. What you send in the next 48 hours is.

I asked five AI tools -- ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Google's AI Overview and Google's AI Mode -- three questions a prospective dental patient might actually ask. Then I asked every question again, same words, same tools, a few minutes later. Thirty answers. Thirty-one different practice names. And in 13 of the 15 question-and-tool pairs, the second answer named a different set of practices than the first. That sounds like a problem. It's actually the most useful thing I've learned this year, and I'll get to why. First, who won.

More than 90 people left a regional law firm in one morning. Forty eight days later, the firm had said nothing publicly about the departures. Here's what happens when you leave the narrative to the people who left — and to AI.

Intuit's CEO sat for a long podcast interview, and afterward the company asked the host to delete the uncomfortable part. He published the request instead. The owner version is a club GM and a local business podcast, and the rule is the same.

A congresswoman stitched two unrelated Kroger announcements into one accusation, weeks before a federal ruling on its biggest deal. Kroger denied the word and left the construction standing. Every owner-led business has a version of this coming.

A small real estate lender landed a strong exclusive by opening with the problem it solves and the numbers behind it. Most local business websites open with a list of services every competitor also offers. One of those gets chosen.

Vail Resorts let a $2-an-hour dispute with 200 ski patrollers become a holiday-week strike, then a class action, then refunds. At a club or a multi-office practice, the customers know your staff by name. Here's the math, before the fight.

Duke objected to The White Lotus putting its logo on a character in crisis, and turned a detail most viewers missed into a national story. The owner-operator version is the demand letter to a one-star reviewer. Here's what to do instead.

Chipotle's CEO found out his portions had shrunk from TikTok, months before any number moved. Your version is a hygienist leaving in March and a review nobody reads. Here's how to hear it while it's still cheap.