What Every Business Owner Should Be Doing About AI Right Now

According to the QuickBooks 2026 AI Impact Report, 77% of small and midsize businesses now use AI regularly, up from 48% about eighteen months earlier. I’ve been in marketing since my SEO days back in 2009 and I have never watched a tool move from “interesting” to “everywhere” this fast.

Whether you run a salon, a construction company, a coaching practice or a software business, the same shift is happening to you, and I want to share how I’m thinking about it as an owner and as someone who wants to invest in great small companies.

Your Customers Already Live With AI

In a TD survey of 2,504 American adults earlier this year, 78% said they use AI-powered tools in their daily lives, and 67% said their skill with those tools grew over the last year. Your customers are getting used to instant answers, instant drafts and instant quotes everywhere else, so they quietly expect the same speed from you.

That means slow follow-up, a week-long wait for a quote and an inbox that only gets checked on Fridays all feel slower to customers than they did even a year ago.

Trust Still Belongs to People

Here’s the part that gives me so much hope. That same TD survey found only 15% of people trust AI a great deal, 55% would rather have more human input on important decisions even if it takes longer, and 81% want some level of human involvement when they call for support. People love the speed of AI and they still want a real person they trust when the stakes go up.

Let AI make you faster everywhere and keep your people right where trust is earned.

Watch What Happens When AI Can Do Your Product

A well-known developer and educator, Josh W. Comeau, shared this summer that his newest online course was on track to sell about a third of a typical launch, and he believes AI tutoring is a big reason why. I think that’s a warning for every industry. Anything a customer can now get from a free AI chat in ten minutes, like a basic logo, a generic contract, a standard meal plan or a first-draft marketing plan, is going to lose pricing power fast.

The parts of your business that keep their value are the ones that need your judgment, your relationships, your reputation and your ability to actually get the thing done.

What I’d Do This Quarter in Any Business

• Hand the busywork to AI first. Follow-up, reporting, scheduling, first drafts and onboarding steps are where most owners lose their week. I’ve replaced several paid software tools in my own business with automations I built using AI, and it gave me hours back every week.
• Put your people where trust lives. Sales conversations, service recovery and judgment calls are where a real human wins the customer, so move your best people closer to those moments.
• Speed up the moment of decision. Faster replies, same-day quotes and instant booking turn interested people into customers before they go looking somewhere else.
• Protect what AI can’t copy. Your reviews, your referrals, your local name and your proof of results are your moat, so invest in collecting them on purpose.
• Get your information in one place. AI is only as smart as what you feed it, and a business with clean customer data, written processes and clear numbers gets far more out of every tool.

Five Questions to Ask Your Team This Week

1. Which tasks did we repeat more than five times last week, and could AI handle the first draft of each one?
2. What could a customer get from a free AI chat that we currently charge for?
3. Where in our customer journey does a real person matter most, and are our best people there?
4. How long does it take us to respond to a new lead, and what would it take to cut that in half?
5. If we hired a manager tomorrow, are our processes written down well enough for them and an AI assistant to run the day?

If any of those answers make you a little uncomfortable, that’s a good sign, because that’s exactly where the opportunity is.

The Businesses I Want to Invest In

I believe the next few years will reward lean companies with great managers, smart systems and real humans at the moments that matter, and they’ll be much harder on businesses that keep doing everything by hand or try to automate away every relationship. That’s the business I’m building, and it’s exactly the kind of business I want to partner with and invest in.