3 Ways to Start Using AI in Your Business Today

You've probably heard that AI is changing everything. You've maybe even played around with ChatGPT once or twice. But between running payroll, managing customers, and putting out fires, who has time to figure out what AI actually means for your business?

Good news: you don't need a computer science degree or a fancy tech budget to start getting real value from AI. Here are three things you can do today, for free, that will save you time and mental energy.

(A quick note: the examples below use Claude, which you can access free at claude.ai. I've used all the major AI tools extensively, and Claude consistently gives better, more natural results for the kind of work small business owners actually need done. But the techniques work with any AI assistant.)

1. Stop writing from scratch.

Think about how much time you spend staring at a blank screen. Customer emails. Social media posts. Job listings. That follow-up to the vendor who's dragging their feet. Every one of these requires you to find the right words, and that takes mental energy you don't have.

Here's the shift: instead of writing, start editing. Open Claude and tell it what you need. "Write a friendly but firm email to a supplier who missed their delivery deadline." "Draft a job posting for a part-time office manager at a small accounting firm." "Give me three social media post ideas for a local landscaping company heading into spring."

You'll get a solid first draft in seconds. It won't be perfect, and it'll sound a little generic, but now you're editing instead of creating. That's a much easier job. Tweak a few phrases to sound like you, and you're done.

2. Use it as a sounding board.

Running a small business means making a hundred decisions a week with no one to bounce ideas off. Should you raise prices? How do you handle that difficult employee situation? Is it worth taking on that new client who seems high-maintenance?

AI won't make these decisions for you, but it's surprisingly good at helping you think through them. Describe your situation and ask it to help you consider the pros and cons. Ask it what questions you should be asking yourself. Ask it to play devil's advocate.

It's like having a business advisor on call 24/7 who never gets tired of your questions and won't judge you for not knowing the answer. You'll still make the final call, but you'll make it with clearer thinking.

3. Turn your chaos into systems.

Every business has at least one process that lives entirely in the owner's head. Onboarding new clients. Handling returns. Closing out the month. You know how to do it, but it's never written down, which means you can't hand it off, and it falls apart when you're sick or on vacation.

Try this: talk through the process out loud (voice-to-text works great for this) or just type it out in a messy brain-dump. Then paste it into Claude and say, "Turn this into a clear step-by-step checklist." What comes back will be organized, logical, and ready to hand to an employee or use as the basis for training.

You just documented a process in ten minutes that would have taken you an hour to write from scratch. Or more likely, would never have gotten done at all.

The real point

None of this requires special tools or technical skills. The goal isn't to replace your judgment or automate everything. It's to get some of your time and headspace back. Start with one of these, and you'll probably find a dozen other ways to use it that are specific to your business.