Many business owners are currently sceptical about the use of AI, but there’s no need to be. If you think using ChatGPT or similar tools will bring about the robot apocalypse and enslave mankind, you are definitely missing out. AI offers a lot of useful perks that can make your life easier now before the Terminators arrive.
Now, to make sure you’re hopping on the AI trend at the right time and to benefit your business, read on. Megan Taylor, Sales Manager and AI consultant at ProjektRising.ai, shares her advice.
Am I Cheating If I Use AI?
One of the major pushbacks when it comes to AI is the perception that it’s somehow cheating. However, this all depends on how you use it. After all, an AI tool is just that: a tool, just like a pen or a notepad. If you’re using a storebought pen to take notes, is it cheating because you haven’t made your own ink and constructed your own writing tool?
The best way to use AI is to think of it as a helping tool, rather than a replacement. For example, you don’t want to be writing all your content using AI, and ironically, it’s not going to be any good either, so it wouldn’t even be helpful “cheating”.
The fact is, you most definitely already use AI on a daily basis without even knowing it, even if it’s something as simple as speaking into your phone to write a text; that’s AI.
Three Reasons Why You Must Invest in AI
1. Affordability
If you’re operating a small business, you likely don’t have that big a budget to hire lots of people to do smaller tasks. This is where AI comes in to do some of the more technical, mundane tasks that nobody really wants to do anyway. If you need an assistant, for example, a lot of their tasks can be automated by AI.
Not only will this save you money but also the time you would take in training a new employee or making sure everything is being done perfectly.
Now, it’s worth noting that 9 out of 10 times, a human employee or assistant will exceed AI but if it comes down to money, time, or really mundane tasks that AI can do in minutes, then AI will definitely be worth it. Again, this goes back to AI being a helping hand rather than a replacement for an employee or human being.
Before you go out and automate everything, though, it’s important to recognise the limitations of AI. An AI tool is remarkable at solving blank page syndrome, meaning it can give you ideas and light the spark of your creative flame, but it can’t handle the entire creative output.
For example, suppose you’re working on a marketing package. In that case, an AI tool can whip up a presentation with images, ideas, branding opportunities, templates, etc. in a heartbeat. Still, when it comes down to the actual report where everything is branded with the right tone of marketing, then you definitely need a human.
2. Growth Benefits
Growth is the main goal of any small business, but how can you work on your growth when you’re always too busy doing technical tasks, buried in Excel sheets and schedules?
For the first few years of any business, it’s all about admin work, networking, onboarding clients, marketing, and anything else that can make your business bigger. So, this is where AI comes in to relieve you of all the time-consuming tasks and let you focus on your growth.
When you start your business, you want to focus on your return on investment as much as possible, so weighing up all the costs is wise. But the pros of AI will eventually cause a domino effect that will help you grow your business even if it’s not an A to B line. One of the things you always need to do every once in a while is a whole administrative clear out, like a good spring clean. This helps you reshuffle everything and set your priorities.
Investing in AI follows the same pathway as any new project in the sense that you research your competitors and other companies, then you decide the pain points in your business and use AI accordingly.
As such, the best way to identify your pain points is by speaking to your team and collaboratively identifying any task that becomes too much of a hassle. Sometimes the best way to grow is to identify your endpoint and work backwards to reach it.
3. Time Saving
Just like any tool, AI was designed with time-saving in mind. It’s not a coincidence that the tasks AI does the best are the tasks that take up too much time normally. However, to get to that stage where you’re saving as much time as possible, you actually need to spend a bit of time beforehand talking to experts and laying out your plan.
Even though AI has been around for a long time, we’re still very much in the Wild West era of it where we just use bits and pieces of its true potential. Because it’s so broad, though, it’s best to find an experienced guiding hand before you start incorporating it into your tasks.
Most importantly, to make sure you’re saving the right time without hindering your own progress, focus all your energy on administrative and creative work. You don’t want to automate the required human effort and end up still sifting through documents and sheets that AI can do. Because AI still can’t think like a human, we just need it to perform tasks that don’t require much thinking.
How Do I Start My AI Investment?
To dip your toes into AI technology, it’s best to start small. It’s tempting to sign up for all the subscriptions and spend loads of money, but starting small allows you to gain enough experience and tinker around with the technology before going deeper. So, it’s best to just start with the free version of ChatGPT or Claude and see what you can do with it.
Ask it to rewrite an email, suggest an idea, write you a poem, give you a template for a page or article, and then when you have enough experience with it, you can move on to the paid versions and fully automate tasks.
Takeaway
If there’s one thing to take away from investing in AI, it’s to just have a play with one and surprise yourself. You would be amazed at the level of tasks AI can perform these days, so just try feeding it a prompt, then go crazier and crazier until you have a formula for automating your work, saving time and money, and watching your business grow.
Last Updated on December 20, 2024
