Why AI? Why Small Businesses Need It (Like, Yesterday)

When I talk about AI and automation for small businesses, I usually get the same responses:

“What if the AI gets something wrong?”
“It sounds like a lot of work, and I don’t have time.”
“AI is unethical.”
“I don’t have anything I could even automate in my business.”

I’ve heard them all.

A lot of the people who end up working with me to automate their business start out completely lost. Some are more tech-savvy and jump in head first, they’ve done some research and are ready. But others? I’ve worked with business owners who refuse to even have a Gmail account.

I get it. This stuff can be intimidating. It feels like a different language. But the truth is, moving into the future isn’t optional anymore. It’s necessary if you want to stay relevant, save time, and actually grow. Not just survive.

If You’re the Backbone of Your Business, You’re Also Its Bottleneck

Let me say that again, you’re the bottleneck. How many small business owners complain about not having enough time? Or that they’re so stretched thin, the business is falling apart? I’ve met people who, if they had to go to the hospital tomorrow, their business would be done in a week. That’s not resilience that’s scary.

This is why I’m so passionate about teaching entrepreneurs how to use AI and automation. Yes, the internet is full of advice for college kids and twenty-somethings just starting out. But the older business owners, the ones in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and even 70s, they’re often being preyed on.

They’re getting sold by self-proclaimed experts charging thousands for information that’s available for free. I’m not against charging for value. But if someone’s asking you to spend thousands, they should be doing the work for you not just emailing you a guid, maybe a few phone calls and telling you to do it yourself.

The Three Things I Believe Every Small Business Needs

Systematize Your Business
I don’t care how “un-systematizable” you think your business is. Trust me, you can do it. People will say, “I have someone follow up with a personal phone call after every sale. You can’t automate that.” But you can systematize it. That just means creating a process: “Call the customer within 24 hours of sale with a personalized check-in.” That’s a system. And systems are how you scale.
Automate Everything You Can
Once you’ve outlined your systems, start automating the repetitive stuff. You’ll be amazed at how many little tasks can be handed off to technology. Automate everything you can automate and your life will be so much easier and you will watch your company grow faster than you ever imagined.
Keep It Human Where It Matters
This isn’t about replacing people. It’s about putting people where they have the most impact. For example, I have an assistant whose only job is answering complex product questions. She’s fast, helpful, and gets on the phone when needed. Could I automate her? Sure. But I don’t want to — that personal attention is part of why our customers stay. So find those areas of your business that are worth keeping human, and build your automation around them.

History Repeats Itself, Are You Stuck in the Past?

Every new technology has critics. Some people ride the wave. Some sit on the shore and scoff. The wrinkled nose people usually get left behind.

I think about the 1950s when rock ‘n roll hit and older generations said it was trash. But the smart people in the music industry saw it for what it was, the future.

That’s how I feel about AI. How are you going to compete with a 25-year-old who has no kids, no boundaries on their time, and knows how to code an army of AI Agents? You don’t beat them by working more hours. You beat them by working smarter and that means implementing this stuff now, not waiting until it’s too late.

Be The Ai Hunter

I have family friends who run a children’s baking school. It’s the sweetest business and they’ve been doing it since the 1990s. They’re professional pastry artists and found a niche that really worked, until recently.

Now they’re slowly fading away. And I believe a big reason is their refusal to automate. Everything is slow and done by hand. Busy parents and schools just don’t want to deal with them anymore. They have no social media, no blog, no online scheduling, no digital presence at all.

They teach children how to make beautiful desserts; macarons, cakes, layered pastries. This is content gold. They could film one video and turn it into a blog post, an Instagram reel, a TikTok, an X post, and an email. They could launch an online school to supplement their income and have evergreen content going 24/7.

But they won’t listen. And I’ve given them ideas until I’m blue in the face. Trying to convince small business owners to try Ai can be tough. They can’t see the value. And they are angry, they don’t want to change. They have every right to be angry, change sucks. But it’s inevitable and we have to keep fighting. Us business owners are hunters, we eat what we kill and if we give up we will starve. It breaks my heart, because a decades-long, successful business is slowly dying because they won’t fight to survive.

“But I Can’t Automate Anything In My Business”

Let’s challenge that belief.

Do you get client emails?
Could you use reminders or have emails auto-organized and prioritized?
How about an AI agent read your inbox and turn tasks into a to-do list?
Could another agent transcribe and summarize your voicemails, list who called, what they wanted, and suggest a callback time on your calendar?

What about:

Automatically generating proposals from form inputs
Calculating drive times and optimizing team schedules
Sending upsell messages 30 days after a service is completed
Auto-filling repetitive forms
Sending a thank-you card or gift after the final invoice is paid
The list goes on and on

Start here:
What do you do more than once a week?
What’s the most monotonous thing you do?
What task always follows the same steps?

That’s where Ai and automation for small businesses starts.

How I’ve Automated and used Ai in My Business

I’ve spent over $100,000 on automation and AI in my business, and here’s a sample of what I’ve built:

I have an AI agent that knows everything about my company — every order, every email, every database entry, every product. My team uses it every day, especially for handoffs, sick days, or new hires.
I have an Ai agent that checks bank accounts for wire transfers and check deposits, matches them to open invoices, sends me a summary and approval form, and then drafts payment instructions for my banker.
I have a customer-facing agent that handles simple questions and keeps things moving. Complicated stuff gets routed to a human.
I have an Ai agent that reads long technical documents and checks them against customer specs. What used to take hours now takes 5–10 minutes. We still review manually, but it flags the issues and lays them out.
All of our data entry is automated. Employees just review and approve instead of entering everything manually.
I have a project management agent that monitors job timelines, compares them to what we quoted, and alerts us when something is off. This has massively improved customer satisfaction and retention.

I could keep going, but you get the idea.

Some of our automations are simple, like data entry. Others are incredibly complex. Our business is very niche, so everything had to be customized, but the payoff has been enormous.

We’re estimating savings in the millions over the next five years in labor costs. (Which gives me more money to pay the employees I do have very well.) Once these automations are set up, they don’t care if you’re doing 10 orders a month or 1,000. They just run. That’s the magic.

Start Ai and Automation Now

Automation isn’t about replacing people. It’s about making space for humans to do what humans do best. It’s about making your business stronger, more efficient, and more resilient.

So don’t wait until you’re scrambling. Start now. Be a hunter.

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