AI for small business: where to start, in 5 steps

The short answer

The best way to start with AI in a small business is one boring task that someone on your team does every week. Make that task faster with ChatGPT or Claude, measure the time saved, then pick the next one. Don't start with a big "AI strategy". Most small businesses that get real value from AI got it from two or three small changes, not one big project.

Below is the plan I use with clients. You can follow it on your own. It takes a few hours spread over two weeks.

Step 1: Write down where the time goes

Ask everyone on the team to note, for one week, the tasks they repeat. Keep it simple: what the task is, how often, and roughly how long it takes.

You're looking for tasks that are:

• Repeated, at least every week
• Text-heavy, like emails, quotes, reports, notes and summaries
• Boring, so nobody minds if a machine does the first draft

Typical finds: answering the same customer questions, writing quotes from old quotes, turning meeting notes into a summary, and reading long documents to find one detail.

Step 2: Pick one task and measure it

Choose the task that is repeated most often and is easiest to check. Write down how long it takes today. If a quote takes 40 minutes, that's your baseline.

Pick something where a mistake is easy to spot. A drafted email you read before sending is a good first task. An automatic invoice sent to a customer without anyone checking is not.

Step 3: Try it with a tool you can buy today

You don't need custom software to start. ChatGPT and Claude both cost about USD 20-25 per person a month, and both are good at writing, summarising and sorting text.

Give one person a paid account for a month and let them try the task with it. Paste in an old quote and the new customer's request, and ask for a draft in the same style. If you want to compare the two tools, read Claude Team or ChatGPT Team.

Step 4: Make it a routine, not a trick

A tool one person uses now and then won't change much. What helps is when the whole team does the task the same way, with the same instructions saved in one place.

In Claude this is a Project, and in ChatGPT it's a project or a custom GPT. You save your price list, your tone of voice and a few good examples once, and everyone gets the same quality without writing long instructions every time. Setting up Claude Projects for a small team shows how.

Also agree on a few ground rules: what can be pasted in, what must always be checked by a person, and who to ask. A one-page AI policy covers it.

Step 5: Check after 30 days

Measure the task again. If the quote now takes 15 minutes instead of 40, and it happens 10 times a month, that's about four hours saved every month for one person. Then pick the next task.

If nothing changed, find out why. Usually it's one of three things: the task wasn't a good fit, the instructions were too vague, or people went back to the old way because nobody showed them the new one.

What it costs

Questions people ask

How can AI help a small business?

Mostly by doing the first draft of text work: customer emails, quotes, meeting notes, summaries and reports. A person checks the result. Most small businesses save a few hours per person each month from two or three such tasks.

Is AI expensive for a small business?

No. ChatGPT and Claude cost about USD 20-25 per person a month on a business plan. The bigger cost is the time it takes to set them up well, which is where outside help can pay off.

Do I need to hire someone to start with AI?

No. You can follow the five steps above yourself. Help makes sense when you don't have the time, or when the task needs a link to your own systems.

When to get help

You can do all of this yourself. People hire me when they don't have the time, when they want to skip the trial and error, or when the right answer needs more than an off-the-shelf tool, like a link to their own systems.

In the AI workflow audit I go through steps 1 to 3 with you and your team in 90 minutes. You get 3-5 concrete recommendations in writing, and we set up one of them before we finish.