Using AI in your existing services
Good news - it's increasingly getting easier to use AI on a regular basis.
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🎓 AI 101 for small business owners:
To piggyback on last week’s newsletter where I mentioned that many big tech companies have incorporated AI into services you are likely already using, I wanted to talk even more about using AI in your existing services.
Like I said last week, I would imagine that every tech company, whether B2B or B2C, is currently trying to figure out how to incorporate AI into what they’re doing.
What does this mean for you and your business?
It means that you should be keeping an eye out for AI popping up in ALL of the services you use on a regular basis to see how you can use AI to your advantage.
For example, two services most businesses use on a regular basis are accounting/bookkeeping and payroll (and some are done through the same provider). Most of the big-name providers are already offering an AI component to what they’re doing. Here are a few examples.
From Intuit (Quickbooks parent company):
From Sage:
From ADP’s Roll app:
If you’re doing any sort of marketing, there is also likely already an AI component in those services.
Here is an example from Klayvio:
One of my favorite ways to use AI is to help me form my thoughts quickly. Odds are you use email on a regular basis, so see how you can incorporate AI into your email program to help you write emails or respond to emails as quickly as possible.
For example, I use Outlook for one of my emails and while Microsoft has introduced CoPilot, I recently found that there are 3rd party AI apps you can also integrate into your Outlook email. I haven’t done it yet but I’m planning to try one called WriteNow. Here is the explanation of how it works:
I look forward to no longer sitting and staring at my email for an extended period of time because the ideal words aren’t coming to me. Instead, I plan to use AI as a starting point to help me figure it out faster than I could on my own.
CONCLUSION:
It is highly likely that some of the service providers you are currently using for your business have already introduced an AI component. Check them out to see how you can use AI to your benefit in what you are already doing in your day-to-day activities.
Just keep in mind that these AI services are still in the very early stages, so if they don’t impress you in the beginning, these companies will be constantly iterating and their AI services should improve as time goes on.
📢 UPDATE
If you’ve been a regular reader of this newsletter, you will see that it’s shorter than usual. In my role as a small business consultant, I do what I call “micro business consulting” which means helping small business owners by giving them as much information in as little time as possible. Because, as the saying goes, time is money. So the less time I take of yours, the more time you can spend making money.
That being said, I realized I should be applying that same model to this newsletter. There have been some fairly lengthy newsletters as I explained the basics of AI and how it relates to small business, but moving forward I’m going to try my best to keep things as short yet info-packed as possible.
If you are new to this newsletter and you’re still trying to understand the basics of AI, I encourage you to go back and read some of the earlier newsletters. Or (SHAMELESS PLUG)…I’ll be releasing my course called AI For Small Business at the end of the month so you could always check that out too. But I’ll be completely honest - the majority of the info in the course can already be found in earlier newsletters so you can check those out for free.
Bottom line: Watch for shorter newsletters as my goal in writing this newsletter, like in my consulting work, is to provide you with as much information as possible in as little time as possible.
🙏 Thank you
Thank you for reading this newsletter. Please keep in mind that the views expressed in this newsletter are my own.
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📘 AI database for small business owners:
Click here to see a list of specific AI services that can be used by small business owners.
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⚠️ Please be aware that AI service providers continuously update their programs and services. As a result, some of the information discussed in this newsletter may have changed by the time you read it.
✍️ Editorial note: While we may earn revenue through some links featured in this newsletter (after all, we are a small business that needs revenue to operate), please know that any links posted will be because we genuinely find them to be of interest and not simply because there is an opportunity for us to make money off of them.
👋 Who am I and why am I writing this newsletter?
My name is Melissa Hopper and I’m a small business consultant and entrepreneur. I’m not an AI expert but rather an AI enthusiast who became curious about how AI could help me in my business and help my clients in their businesses.
I decided to start this newsletter to share what I’m learning and what my clients are learning about how AI can help small businesses. To learn more about what I do, click here.