How I Use AI as a Small Business Owner (Without Losing the Plot)

AI is simultaneously scary, boring, tedious, and annoying to me. If AI comes up in a conversation, I’ll be honest, I instantly start thinking about something, anything, else.

So believe me when I tell you that this article is written by someone who does not have a natural affinity for AI.

But here’s the thing: AI really is one of the most powerful tools humanity has ever created. It is in its weird, messy infancy, but it is already incredibly powerful. And when we don’t engage with powerful tools, we leave their development and impact in the hands of everyone else.

I deeply respect people who choose to limit or avoid technology because it affects their attention, relationships, or ethics. I respect the concerns about the environmental cost of data centers, especially where those costs fall unevenly. I respect the critiques about bias, cultural flattening, and value extraction from creators. These critiques matter.

The only place I differ is this. As small business owners who want to make a living, express creativity, and build the world we want to live in, I don’t think avoiding AI serves us.

I assume you are someone who wants to strengthen your work, your livelihood, and your community. And I genuinely think AI can help you do those things when used wisely and intentionally. I see examples every day of makers, writers, herbalists, ceramicists, farmers, and organizers who are shaping AI to serve their work, not the other way around.

I tend to think of AI as a kind of natural or cultural phenomenon. Like foxglove. Like solstice celebrations. Like water flowing downhill. Kevin Kelly talks about how technology tends to expand. It’s not wise or practical to stand in front of that and try to stop it. That has never worked. Our role is to help shape it. To decide how it shows up in our own lives. How it enriches or detracts. How it helps or harms.

So here is what I’ve learned about using AI as a small business owner, based on real practice rather than hype or avoidance.

don’t do this with ai

Don’t use it as a magic eight ball for major life or business decisions.

It cannot feel your timing, context, or values. And I have not found it to be particularly good at weighing out complex, interrelated issues.

Don’t let it produce content that is almost you, but not quite.

I know it’s tempting to ask it to write a product description or an email or an article. But truly: that “nearly your voice” tone erodes trust. Instead, I recommend using it to lightly refine your own words, using a huge amount of your own authentic writing as the input.

Don’t use AI to speed up work that didn’t need to be done at all.

Fast nonsense is still nonsense.

Don’t say you are not “tech-y enough” for AI.

This is the lowest-bar technology we have. You use plain English to operate it. If you don’t want to learn it, the honest sentence is: “I’m not choosing to invest time in that tool right now.” That is a perfectly good boundary.

Don’t let your privacy get infringed upon.

Currently, the most important setting to check is this. Go to Settings > Data controls > Improve the model for everyone and make sure it is set to OFF. Over time, interfaces will change so you may need to research the most important privacy settings and account setups as time goes on.

do (or try) this with ai

Use it to overcome starting resistance.

Sometimes I’ll give it a page of messy ideas and inklings and insights and ask it to turn that into a task list. The tasks themselves aren’t always right but the momentum often helps me take first steps.

Use it to overcome finishing resistance.

Let it help polish something already written and already in your voice, according to your criteria. For instance your prompt might be: Please help me refine this piece of writing. In some places, concepts need to be fleshed out or examples added. In others, just edited for clarity and flow. Please retain almost all of my wording, tone, and cadence.

Systematize what you already do.

For example: Paste 10 real outreach emails you’ve written to store owners. And then your prompt might be: Using these outreach email examples, please give me 2-3 templates I can use for outreach moving forward. Retain my wording, ethos, cadence, and tone. Another example: record a video of your monthly bookkeeping routine (that you always have to somehow figure out from scratch.) Then turn that into a transcript with something like Whisper. Give the transcript to ChatGPT and ask it to turn it into a monthly task list. Now you have your system, not a generic one.

Have it respond in a particular perspective if that helps you think more clearly.

For instance: “Explain this as if you are my accountant who values clarity.” Or: “Give feedback as if you are my favorite shop owner who is warm and honest.”

Use it for real analysis of your actual data.

We have access to a lot of raw data. Shopify exports, Squarespace numbers, Google Analytics data. Your quickbooks accounts. What has been hard until now is that answering even simple questions required a huge amount of skill and/or effort to answer. I have found that getting AI to analyze your own data – using useful and precise questions – is one of the most powerful ways to use the tool right now. For instance, you could upload a spreadsheet of your payment transactions (for instance from Shopify or Stripe) and ask:

• How do my sales this year compare to the same quarters in the previous three years?

• Which products are increasing in revenue share and which are decreasing?

Use it as a transcription and summarization tool.

This has saved me hundreds of dollars and many hours.

Give it more input.

The more of your real examples, language, and references you provide, the more useful it becomes. For instance:

• Take a minute to clarify in your own mind what outcome you want before you begin.

• Tell it to ask clarifying questions before answering.

• Ask it to check its own work. After it answers, say: Identify weaknesses, missing considerations, or assumptions here.

Sometimes I think about AI as a sharp tool. It can absolutely be misused. It can replace some kinds of labor in ways that feel precarious. It can be intimidating and even dangerous depending how you use it. But for certain small businesses, it is profoundly helpful — and pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t keep us safer. It just limits our options.

We don’t have to love AI.

We don’t have to use it to replace the people, connections, or experiences we don’t want to replace.

We don’t have to center our work around it.

But we can learn to pick it up the same way we pick up any other tool. Slowly. Skeptically. Thoughtfully. Shaping it as we go. Because part of building the world we want to live in is also understanding, and then shaping, the tools that will help build it.

And that work — shaping, guiding, refining — is something small business owners are already very, very good at.