Ask a mentor – artificial intelligence for small business

The biggest one is chasing shiny distractions. A new AI tool launches every week promising to change everything. Most of them are just ChatGPT with lipstick. Business owners sign up, play with it for a week, and never use it again. The second mistake is trying to automate everything at once instead of starting small and building trust. And the third is bolting AI onto a broken process—that's like learning 3 guitar chords and then being asked to play Sweet Child O' Mine in front of 100,000 people. Fix the process first, then add the AI.

The biggest win is speed. When a potential client enquires at 9pm on a Sunday and gets an intelligent, helpful response within minutes instead of waiting until Monday morning, that's a completely different experience. AI can also personalise follow-ups, remember client preferences, and make sure nobody falls through the cracks. For retention, AI can automate check-ins with existing clients—the 'just checking in' email that most business owners mean to send but never get around to. It's not about replacing the relationship. It's about making sure the relationship doesn't get neglected because you're too busy.

Admin centric tasks like:

• writing up meeting notes and follow-up emails
• responding to initial enquiries
• onboarding new clients with intake forms
• scheduling and reminders
• data entry between systems
• social media content creation
• lead generation and lead nurturing
• internal sales processes
• marketing or competitor research
• SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis
• strategic planning
• sales analysis
• forecasting.

The common thread is repetitive tasks that follow a pattern or tasks that need you to process a lot of information quickly—AI handles both brilliantly. The key is the process needs to be solid first. AI amplifies what you're already doing. If the process is a mess, AI will just amplify the mess.

I worked with a local law firm that was spending hours writing up client file notes and letters after every consultation. We built an AI system that listens to client meetings, transcribes them in the firm's own brand voice, and produces a client letter and internal file note automatically. What used to take 30–45 minutes per meeting now takes a couple of minutes to review and send. Across their team, that's saving them around $72,000 a month in recovered productivity. The lawyers get that time back to do actual legal work, see more clients, or leave the office on time. That's the kind of result that makes this worthwhile.

If you're a small business owner and you're not sure where to start, try this: write down every task you do in a week. Circle the ones that are repetitive, follow a pattern, and don't need your personal expertise. That's your AI shortlist. Pick one, start there, and see what happens. You don't need to understand how AI works under the hood—you just need to know what problem you want it to solve. And if someone tells you AI will fix everything overnight, they're selling you something. Start small, build trust, then build bigger.

Start with the task that wastes you the most time each week and use AI to do that faster.

What tools should I invest in?

Start with one core tool, for example ChatGPT, and only add more when you hit a real need.

Will AI replace jobs in my business?

No, not if you don't want it to. Use it to optimise how people will work in your business.

Is it safe to use AI within my business? Will my data be safe?

Generally, yes, but it depends on the tool and how you use it. Avoid entering sensitive or client-confidential information into public AI tools. Ensure you put an AI policy in place for your business.

How do I not lose my brand voice with AI?

Get AI to do the draft and edit it to match your tone and brand voice.

What's the ROI of using AI tools?

Less time on admin, faster output, and more capacity to win and deliver work.

How do I get my team to use AI?

Show them real use cases, give simple prompts, and make it part of everyday work.

How do I stay safe using AI in my business?

Set simple rules: no sensitive data, review outputs, and keep a human in the loop. Ensure you have an AI policy for your business.

Keep the human in the loop.

Small businesses can keep the human touch by using AI to draft and support work, but always having a person review, refine, and personalise it before it goes out. Focus on keeping your tone, language, and customer interactions true to your brand, rather than publishing generic AI outputs (slop).

Administration and documentation

• Meeting notes and summaries
• Emails and proposals
• Turning rough notes into structures, documents or plans

Marketing and content creation

• Social posts, images, videos, blogs, newsletters
• Website content
• Campaign ideas and plans

Customer enquiries and support

• Responding to common questions
• Drafting replies to emails
• Basic chatbot or frequently asked question (FAQ) automation

I worked with a small business owner who found social media a constant burden, he didn't have time to create content, didn't enjoy it, and didn't fully trust others to represent his brand properly. We set up a simple AI-supported process that helped generate content ideas, draft posts, and suggest timing and tags, while still prompting him to review and tweak everything to keep his voice intact.

Over time, this removed the pressure without taking away control. After about 6 months, he built enough confidence in the system to hand it over to a team member, with a light approval step in place freeing up his time while still feeling confident his brand is represented the way he wants.

Create a simple 'AI Playbook' for your business. e.g. when we use it, when we don't, simple example prompts, approved tools to use, basic rules to follow.

Take one use case per month to start using AI, don't do it all together. e.g. Month 1: Emails and meeting notes. Month 2. Marketing, etc.

Build your business Prompt Library. Develop a library of prompts that work for your business, in your voice. Don't treat AI like a search engine. Give it clear instructions and check the result. It all starts with writing good prompts and storing them for reuse.

• Where do I even start with AI in my business?
• What AI tools do I actually need, and which ones are just noise?
• Can AI help me get more leads or save time?
• Will AI replace my team, or can it support them?
• How do I use AI without sounding robotic?
• What parts of my business should be automated first?
• How do I connect AI with my CRM, forms, emails, and customer journey?
• Is AI expensive to implement?
• How do I make sure AI still feels personal and aligned with my brand?

This is so important. My view is that AI should support the human experience, not replace it. The best way to keep the human touch is to decide which moments in the business must stay human.

For example:

• empathy-based customer conversations
• sales conversations that require trust
• sensitive complaints or issues
• strategic advice
• personal check-ins and relationship building.

AI can handle the repetitive setup around those moments, but the real human value should still show up where it matters most. It also helps to make sure the brand voice is clear. If you train prompts, workflows, and messaging around your actual tone, values, and customer language, AI becomes an extension of your business rather than a robotic replacement.

In simple terms: automate the process, not the care.

The biggest mistakes I see are:

• starting with too many tools at once
• automating a bad process instead of fixing it first
• using AI without a clear customer journey
• relying on generic AI outputs without human review
• removing too much human interaction from sales or support
• thinking AI will solve a strategy problem
• not training the team properly on how to use it
• chasing trends instead of focusing on business outcomes.

One of the biggest traps is paying for lots of disconnected platforms that create more confusion instead of less. Small businesses need fewer tools, better systems, and clearer workflows.

The most common ones are:

• lead capture and initial follow-up
• appointment booking and reminders
• frequently asked questions and customer support
• email and SMS follow-up sequences
• social media content ideation and repurposing
• proposal or document drafting
• internal admin and task summaries
• CRM updates and contact tagging
• review requests and post-service follow-up
• team workflows and handover notes.

For small businesses, the sweet spot is usually in marketing, sales follow-up, customer communication, and admin. These are the areas where time gets lost fastest and where speed makes a big difference.

I worked with a dental academy that wanted to increase registrations for its Australian Dental Council webinar funnel. Their previous best was 190 registrations. By improving their CRM, automating the lead journey, and using AI-supported marketing and follow-up processes to reduce manual gaps, we helped them reach 400 webinar registrations. For me, that is the best use of AI in a small business: not hype, but using it to improve speed, consistency, and conversion

• Is AI going to replace humans?
• Can AI do everything better than humans?

Most questions are directly related to, or a derivative of, these questions, because every business is interested in reducing their operating costs and they want to know whether AI can help achieve that.

If a business can make it clear that they are introducing AI to assist and augment the existing staff, not replace them, then it would reduce genuine concerns staff may have about their job security, which if ignored, would negatively impact their overall productivity and well-being. Therefore, it is important for business owners and decision makers to be mindful of how poor communication related to AI can create unnecessary issues.

If a business can uncover how they are currently letting down their customers and are able to use AI to directly address those areas, then customer experience will improve, and customer retention will increase. For example, if a customer arrives on the website and has a chat with a support agent that can quickly answer their questions and/or direct them to a resolution, it will generally have a positive impact on their overall experience.

The biggest mistake would be to ignore privacy implications, closely followed by implementing AI without actually considering how it can specifically benefit the business, how ROI will be measured and not considering the unseen costs of AI, like productivity being affected by users learning to manage AI instead of focusing on their tasks.

For a disability care provider that I am working for, I am looking at implementing a local AI solution that can process deidentified carer notes about clients to chart client improvements.

All small businesses should be aware that the Office of Australian Information Commissioner always recommends due diligence and strong governance when using commercial AI products with personal information. Read Guidance on privacy and the use of commercially available AI products for more information.