How Small Businesses Can Use AI to Save Time and Boost Productivity

Practical AI Applications for Small Businesses

I recently led a workshop on AI applications for small businesses with 1-10 employees. Here’s what you need to know to start using AI effectively without major investment or technical expertise.

What AI Can Do for Your Small Business

During the workshop, I demonstrated several practical applications you can implement today:

Content Creation and Marketing

• Generate first drafts of blog posts and newsletters that you can refine
• Create social media captions in minutes rather than hours
• Use Midjourney with specific style guidelines for consistent branded images

One strategy I use myself is content repurposing – I mine my podcast archive using AI to extract insights and create new content, maximising return on content I’ve already created.

Business Operations

• Generate live meeting notes and create concise summaries
• Reduce proposal writing time from hours to 15-20 minutes with customised AI tools
• Draft responses to common email inquiries and organise your inbox

Strategic Applications

• Get valuable strategic advice by feeding business context to AI
• Create specialised tools for prompt creation, sales documents, and text shortening

Custom GPTs: Your Personal AI Assistants

In the workshop, I showed how to create custom GPTs (personalised AI tools with specific instructions):

• Prompt Creator: Helps write effective AI prompts
• Sales Document Builder: Generates proposals based on your business specifics
• Text Shortener: Condenses content while keeping key information
• Business Coach GPT: Provides strategic advice based on your business context
• Content Tools: For writing LinkedIn posts, blog content, etc.

These custom GPTs are valuable because they contain your specific business knowledge, streamline repetitive tasks, and provide consistent outputs based on your requirements. Creating them is straightforward – give the GPT a name, icon, description, and instructions about how to handle specific tasks.

Three Types of Prompting

I’ve identified three effective approaches to communicating with AI:

1. Simple Prompting

Basic commands like “summarise this article” or “generate a list of ideas.” These work for straightforward tasks but often need refinement.

2. Conversational Prompting

Natural dialogue with AI, explaining context as you go. For example, I might discuss blog post ideas while working on other tasks, building context through conversation.

3. Structured Prompting

Pre-written, formatted prompts for consistent results. This is especially useful for complex tasks. I use the GOAL framework:

• Goal: Define specific outcome
• Output: Specify format and style
• Additional context: Provide background information
• Look at results and refine

For businesses that need reliable outputs, structured prompting using templates can save significant time.

Which AI Tools Should You Start With?

In the workshop, I covered several AI tools:

• ChatGPT: Great all-rounder with voice and image capabilities in the Plus version
• Claude: Excellent for longer content and handling larger documents
• Microsoft Copilot: Integrates well with Office products
• Gemini: Strong capabilities for creative tasks

For small businesses just starting, ChatGPT or Claude offer the best balance of capabilities and ease of use.

5 Critical Warnings Before You Start

Before implementing AI in your business, be aware of these important limitations:

1. AI makes confident mistakes: It sometimes gives wrong answers while insisting they’re correct. Always fact-check important outputs.
2. Built-in biases exist: AI systems can reflect biases from their training data, so review content for unintended biases.
3. Over-flattery is common: AI tools tend to be overly complimentary. Don’t let AI feedback replace real customer input.
4. Context limitations matter: Each AI tool can only process a limited amount of text at once.
5. Skills are uneven: AI might excel at writing sophisticated content but struggle with basic tasks like counting – what experts call the “jagged frontier” of capabilities.

Getting Started: Your 3-Step Action Plan

Start with this simple approach:

1. Identify Your Time-Drains

List repetitive tasks that consume your time but don’t require your unique skills:

• Drafting routine emails
• Creating social media content
• Summarising documents or meetings
• Writing first drafts of marketing materials

2. Experiment with One Tool and One Task

Pick one AI tool and apply it to one specific task from your list:

• Use ChatGPT to draft responses to common customer inquiries
• Try Claude to summarise your team meetings
• Use AI to create social media content for a week

3. Evaluate and Expand

After two weeks, assess:

• How much time did you save?
• Was the quality acceptable or did it require significant editing?
• What was the learning curve like?

Based on your findings, refine your approach or expand to additional tasks.

The Bottom Line

For small businesses, AI tools aren’t about replacing human creativity – they’re about reducing time spent on routine tasks so you can focus on what matters: serving customers, developing your team, and growing your business.

The most successful small businesses find the right balance between AI efficiency and human touch.

Start small, stay practical, and use these tools to serve your business goals.

What AI task will you try this week?

[Download workshop report]