How Business Owners Can Profit From the Power of AI

Says Casey Frid, an entrepreneurship professor at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business: "I feel like AI has given everyone their own executive assistant."

Older entrepreneurs have particular advantages in their ability to use AI to turbocharge their businesses.

"The individual with experience has a concept of the nuances of the business and a lifetime of knowing their customer," says Jim Weber, chief experience officer at the financial services company Comerica. "AI can let you take that experience and amplify it to be much more productive and smarter."

Basso couldn't agree more. As you get older, he says, "you know how to ask AI questions better, which is the key to using AI."

Here are seven ways entrepreneurs can leverage AI:

• To let you spend time on what you need, and want, to do  “AI helps owners focus on strategy and the reason they got into the business to start with so they’re spending less time on the drudgery of the backend work like payroll management,” says Crenshaw.

• To do better, quicker data analysis  One of AI’s best features for business owners is detecting patterns in company data to boost revenues.

"You can throw customer spending data into something like ChatGPT and say, 'Is there any geographic data where people are spending more and my company should target promotions and advertising?'" says Holly Wade, executive director of the NFIB Research Center.

Basso offers another example from personal experience: "I can ask AI to give me 100 companies in a certain type of business and it will give that to me in seconds. That would normally take me three to four hours," he says.

• To overcome writer’s block "I’m not a writer and have struggled with grammar my whole life. Without AI, I don’t think my book would’ve ever been written,” says Kern. “It gets rid of the blank sheet."

But, says Crenshaw, "AI should never be the final draft because you need the human touch to make sure everything's right."

• To summarize meetings  “I use Fathom AI, which is a specific application for note taking,” says Kern. “You can query it to say, “Well, what did Richard say?’ And then I get what Richard said.”

• To make compelling graphics and videos  Comerica’s Weber offers this example: “Say you’re a pizza restaurant founded in 1912 and want to do a video to make it look like you’ve got captured footage of your original owner. You can do that now with AI. That wasn’t possible six months ago,” he says.

• To help your business show up in online, and AI, searches  “I wanted ChatGPT to know as much as it can about us because now if you ask it for top sales recruiters, it’s going to recommend us along with other companies,” says Basso.

• To assist with supply chain issues  “A Coachella Valley company with a skincare product line marketing to an over-50 demographic just called us and told me they’ve used AI to cut costs by finding locations where there may not be high tariff rates,” says Crenshaw.