Artificial intelligence is everywhere at the moment. It is in the news, on LinkedIn, in business podcasts, in software tools and probably in conversations with customers, suppliers and competitors. For many small business owners, that can feel exciting, but also slightly exhausting.
You may already have a long list of things to do. You are serving customers, chasing invoices, managing suppliers, trying to win new work, keeping your website up to date, posting on social media, preparing proposals and still somehow finding time to think about the future of your business.
So when someone tells you that you “need to start using AI”, it is understandable if your first reaction is: “With what time?”
That was the heart of a recent conversation between Andrew and Jon, who discussed how small business owners, solopreneurs, founders and SMEs can start using AI in a practical, useful and non-intimidating way. The key message was simple: AI is not just for large companies with big budgets. Used well, it can help small businesses save time, improve quality and focus more energy on the work that really matters.
Start With the Reason You Built the Business
Before jumping into tools, prompts or platforms, Jon made an important point: business owners should start by remembering why they built their business in the first place.
What problem are you solving?
Who are you solving it for?
What product or service do you offer that makes life easier, better, cheaper, faster or less stressful for your customers?
That matters because AI is not magic. It is not a business strategy on its own. It is most useful when it helps you do more of the things that already create value for your customers.
For a small business owner, this is a healthy way to look at AI. The goal is not to use AI because everyone else is talking about it. The goal is to use it where it can support your business, reduce friction and give you more time to focus on your strengths.
In other words, do not start with “How can I use AI?” Start with “Where am I spending too much time on work that does not require my full attention?”
That question quickly leads to practical opportunities.
Think of AI as an Extra Team Member
One of the most useful ideas from the conversation was to think of AI as an additional team member. Not a replacement for you. Not a replacement for your judgement. More like a fast, capable assistant who can help with research, writing, planning, summaries and admin.
Jon compared AI to “a really knowledgeable and really fast working intern”. That is a helpful comparison because it sets the right expectations. An intern can do useful work, but they still need guidance. You need to tell them what you want. You need to give them examples. You need to check the output.
The same is true of AI.
For many small businesses, hiring new people is expensive. Even using freelancers or agencies can be a big commitment. AI can help you bridge the gap before you are ready to build a bigger team.
It can help you:
- Summarise meetings
- Draft follow-up emails
- Research potential customers
- Prepare proposals
- Create first drafts of documents
- Build agendas
- Turn rough notes into structured plans
- Generate ideas for social media or blog posts
- Organise customer feedback
- Compare options
- Prepare training materials
- Create checklists and action plans
None of this means handing over your business to a machine. It means giving the time-consuming first draft, first pass or first structure to AI, then applying your own experience on top.
That distinction is important.
Use AI for the Jobs You Already Understand
A common mistake is to start with something too complicated. If you ask AI to do work in an area you do not understand, it becomes much harder to judge whether the result is good.
A better approach is to pick a task you know well, but that takes too much time.
That might be preparing for a sales meeting, drafting a client proposal, researching a market, building a workshop agenda or summarising a customer call. Because you already understand the task, you can quickly see whether the output is useful.
Jon’s advice was to choose something familiar but time-consuming, then give the repetitive parts to a leading AI platform such as ChatGPT or Claude and compare the result with what you would normally have done yourself.
That is a sensible starting point for small business owners. You are not betting the business on AI. You are testing it on work you already know how to do.
A Simple Example: Preparing for a Meeting
Andrew shared a very practical example from his own work. Before a round table discussion, he would normally spend a couple of hours researching the people attending. That meant looking at LinkedIn profiles, reading posts and comments, searching for articles, checking what people had published and identifying useful conversation points.
For a meeting with ten people, that could take more than two hours.
Instead, he used AI. He described the process as if he were briefing an intern. He explained what he would normally do, listed the research steps, uploaded a spreadsheet with names, organisations, job titles and LinkedIn profiles, then asked for a document broken down by person with relevant bullet points.
The result was a structured Word document produced in seconds. More importantly, it gave him time to absorb and use the information, rather than spending most of his preparation time collecting it.
This is where AI becomes powerful for small business owners.
It is not just about speed. It is about moving your time and attention to higher-value work.
Instead of spending two hours gathering information, you might spend 20 minutes reviewing, refining and thinking about how to use it. That can make you better prepared for sales calls, customer meetings, networking events or supplier negotiations.
A Bigger Example: Creating Workshop Materials
Jon also shared a more advanced example involving a founder who runs workshops for businesses. Traditionally, preparing a workshop meant several days of work. He had to research current legislation, understand the client’s industry, consider the audience, create agendas, develop breakout session materials, build slide decks and prepare follow-up documents.
That is a lot of work, especially for a small business where the same person is often selling, delivering and managing the client relationship.
By using AI, the founder explained the task in plain language, pointed the tool towards relevant examples and asked for the materials he needed. The AI produced an outline agenda, breakout materials for several sessions, a large presentation document using his branded materials and a detailed booklet for participants.
He still reviewed everything carefully. He made adjustments. He applied his own expertise. But the heavy lifting, especially the time-consuming formatting and first-draft preparation, had been dramatically reduced.
This example matters because it shows how AI can help a small business do more without simply working longer hours.
The founder could offer more workshops, serve more clients, potentially reduce preparation time and improve the consistency of his materials. That is not just a productivity improvement. It can change what the business is able to sell.
AI Helps You Work on the Business, Not Just in the Business
One of the biggest challenges for small business owners is getting stuck in the day-to-day work.
You may know that you need to improve your website, create a better sales process, build case studies, review your pricing, explore a new market or develop a new service. But those tasks are often pushed aside because urgent work gets in the way.
AI can help by reducing the time spent on routine tasks and creating space for more strategic thinking.
Andrew summed this up well by saying that AI can free up time for business owners to work on the business instead of only in the business.
That is perhaps the most important point for small businesses.
AI is not just about doing the same work faster. It can help you finally get to the important work that keeps being delayed.
For example, you could ask AI to help you:
- Analyse your current customer base and identify patterns
- Turn past projects into case studies
- Draft a simple marketing plan
- Create a list of potential new customer segments
- Review your service offering and suggest clearer packaging
- Turn customer questions into website FAQs
- Create a basic onboarding guide for new clients
- Draft email templates for common customer situations
- Summarise feedback from surveys or reviews
- Build a simple action plan for the next quarter
These are not futuristic uses. They are practical, everyday business tasks.
You Do Not Need to Be Technical
A major barrier for many small business owners is the belief that AI is complicated. It can sound technical, especially when people talk about models, automation, integrations and data.
But getting started does not need to be complex.
As Andrew’s example showed, you can use normal language. You can type instructions as if you were briefing a person.
For example:
“Please help me prepare for a meeting with this potential client. I have attached some notes about their business. Give me a short summary of what they do, three likely challenges they may have, five questions I should ask and a suggested follow-up email.”
Or:
“Please turn these rough notes into a clear proposal for a small business client. Keep the language simple, professional and friendly. Include a short introduction, the problem, the proposed solution, timings, costs and next steps.”
Or:
“Please summarise this meeting transcript into key decisions, action points, owners and deadlines.”
You do not need to start with advanced automation. You do not need to connect every system in your business. You do not need to become an AI expert.
Start with one task. See what happens. Improve your instructions. Try again.
Good Instructions Produce Better Results
AI works best when you give it context.
A weak instruction might be:
“Write me a sales email.”
A stronger instruction would be:
“Write a friendly but professional sales email to the owner of a local accountancy firm. I run a web design business for professional services firms. The goal is to offer a free 20-minute website review. Keep it short, avoid pushy language and include a clear call to action.”
The second version gives the AI a better chance of producing something useful.
The same applies when using AI for research, planning or document creation. Tell it:
- Who the audience is
- What the purpose is
- What tone you want
- What format you need
- What information it should use
- What information it should avoid
- What a good answer looks like
You can also give it examples of your previous work. That helps the tool understand your style and expectations.
As Jon pointed out, AI can become much more useful when it has access to your brand, website, previous work or examples of what “good” looks like.
Always Check the Output
There is one important warning: AI should not be treated as automatically correct.
It can make mistakes. It can misunderstand your instructions. It can produce content that sounds confident but needs checking. It may miss context that you understand because you know your customers, your industry and your business.
That is why the best way to use AI is as a collaborator, not as a final decision-maker.
Let it create the first draft. Let it summarise the meeting. Let it prepare the agenda. Let it suggest ideas. Then review, edit and improve the result.
For small business owners, this is usually still a big win. Reviewing and improving a good first draft is often much faster than starting from a blank page.
AI Will Not Be a Differentiator Forever
One of the closing points in the conversation was that small business owners should start experimenting now because AI will not remain a competitive advantage for long. It is likely to become a normal part of how businesses operate.
That does not mean you need to panic. But it does mean that waiting too long may make it harder to catch up.
The businesses that benefit most will probably not be the ones that chase every new tool. They will be the ones that build simple habits around AI and use it to improve everyday work.
The best starting point is not dramatic transformation. It is a small, useful experiment.
Pick one task this week that normally takes too long. Brief AI as if it were an intern. Give it context. Ask for a clear output. Review the result. Then decide whether it saved you time or improved the quality of your work.
Final Thought: Use AI to Make More Space for Your Strengths
Every small business owner has a set of strengths. It might be building relationships, solving customer problems, designing products, delivering great service, spotting opportunities or explaining complex topics simply.
The problem is that those strengths are often buried under admin, formatting, research, note-taking and repetitive communication.
That is where AI can help.
It can take on some of the heavy lifting. It can reduce the blank-page problem. It can speed up research. It can tidy rough thinking into useful structure. It can turn conversations into actions. It can help you prepare better, follow up faster and present your ideas more clearly.
The point is not to remove the human from the business. For small businesses, the human is often the reason customers buy in the first place.
The point is to give that human more time, more focus and better support.
So, if you run a small business and have not yet started experimenting with AI, start small. Choose a task you understand. Give clear instructions. Check the output. Improve it. Then try again.
You may find that AI is not as intimidating as it looks. In fact, it may become the extra pair of hands your business has needed for a long time.
(If watching or listening is more your thing, this article is based on the discussion you can see below. And yes, of course we used AI to help us draft this article!)
