Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) constantly face the challenge of limited resources. With tight budgets and small teams, small business leaders intuitively understand the need to maximize productivity and get the most bang for our buck.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons you’ll find many SMEs leading the way when it comes to adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI). When thoughtfully implemented, AI has the power to significantly multiply the impact of a small business’ existing capabilities. It can act as a “force multiplier”. (Context: In military science terms, a force multiplier is a factor {like a tool}, ‘which increases a unit’s combat potential, allowing it to fight on a par with a larger force’. Pasha Irshad, co-founder of Shape & Scale, made this reference in my recent conversation with him on my podcast, The 4am Report – if you’re an audio person, listen in.)
So, how CAN AI help small business teams simplify our workload and find more time? Here are some of the top things you need to think about to operationalize.
1. Spot, and map out, your (repeat) friction points that can be automated
Use AI tools – like ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, Notion, MidJourney, and Perpexity, as well as workflow automation tools like Zapier, Hubspot and others to identify repetitive tasks that create friction and automate them. Tasks like basic research, data sorting, scheduling social media, formatting reports, and other rote workflows can save a lot of time when approached with the principles of robotic process automation (RPA). Thinking of AI like “RPA for the founder mind” can free up mental bandwidth for small business leaders to focus on more strategic priorities.
2. Surface insights from your data
As agile early adopters of tech, SMEs often collect troves of data but may lack the analytics horsepower to gain value from it. Generative AI makes short work of analytics to help uncover patterns and insights. This will help you better understand your customers, identify new opportunities, and make smarter decisions (in less time).
3. Learn how to prompt generative AI and build institutional memory for AI learning
An important part of leveraging AI as a small business is learning how to properly prompt the technology. Thoughtful prompts allow you to tap into the full potential of generative AI. Take the time to experiment with different prompts, inputs, and examples to see what works best for your to-do list.
You’ll also want to build institutional memory by cataloging your successful AI use cases, queries, and prompts in a knowledge base. This allows your team to reference past learnings rather than starting from scratch each time. Organizations that master prompting and create AI knowledge repositories will find themselves ahead of the curve and in possession of a decided edge when automation-by-AI gains mainstream traction. (Which I totes believe it will. Like the birth of the internet! Or the calculator!)
Looking to really unlock the power of AI for your small business? Join The AI Advantage premium content program. Dubbed ‘an essential AI textbook’ for small business, this program will give you access to in-depth tutorials, actionable strategic marketing plays, and an exponentially growing generative AI prompt library that will take your AI skills to the next level.
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4. Simplify content creation
Content marketing is pretty key for most small businesses, but quality content takes time. AI writing assistants like ChatGPT can help speed up the creation of content drafts. Generate blog posts, social captions, and other marketing copy a LOT faster than before. While human review is still required, AI provides a strong starting point to build on. For example, you’ll be starting your drafts at 30-50% instead of starting from zero each time. This percentage increases as skill and mastery from humans is fed into our AI tools to further speed up the content creation process.
5. Vastly improve your customer service
With limited staffing, many SMEs can easily get overwhelmed in the process of operationalizing the high level of customer service that we hope to deliver. Paradoxically, it is this commitment to delivering a high level of service to customers that sets many small businesses apart. Generative AI combined with human effort will enable you to make short work of overflowing inboxes, and create the kind of institutional memory that will simplify the management of common requests and repeat actions. This improves customer satisfaction while creating the time and space for your people to focus on high-value actions that focus on relationships.
6. Put saved time into your life’s real priorities
At its core, AI allows you to get more done with less. This means saving time for what matters most, whether it’s strategic work to solve the world’s problems, family time, or health.
Using AI thoughtfully is about working smarter, not harder. And that is often why many entrepreneurial minds got into the game to begin with! The key is to apply AI to amplify existing resources, not replace them. With the right focus, AI can help us SMEs punch WAY above our weight class.
It’s important to remember that an early adopter advantage will only be ours for a limited time. So it’s important that we each move as fast as we (comfortably) can. So, if you’re looking to get moving with AI for your small business and are want a powerful learning resource, I can help. Get The AI Advantage.
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📌 Generative AI tools and enablers referenced in this article are rounded-up below for easy reference 👇(it’s worth noting that all of these have a free version, many robust enough for ongoing use)
ChatGPT – ubiquitous at this point, and defo the folks who brought us to mass adoption of AI in one weekend! Chat.openai.com
Jasper – a copywriting AI assistant that’s been around for a while and has massively improved in a post ChatGPT world! Jasper.ai
Claude – claude.ai – generative AI language model. Like ChatGPT but better is the way they tell it. Are they? Stay tuned for our break down on the mainstream NLPs in a future episode.
Building a second brain: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/
Notion – Knowledge management system – Wiki x Docs x Projects – it’s like the concert headliner act of AI tools to many 💁♀️ https://www.notion.so/
Perplexity.ai – AI-powered search engine. Think ChatGPT and Google’s love child 😁
Zapier.com – the workflow automation tool of small business champions! It’s an accessible tool that can string a lot of the other generative AI tools together into an actual automated action.
