Tuesday, October 27, 2026
Most SME marketing describes the product and targets a demographic — and both miss why people actually buy. Here's the Jobs To Be Done framework, and how to find the job your business is really being hired to do.
Short answer: Hand over three jobs first: drafting customer follow-up, drafting marketing, and preparing the admin behind your books. All three are repetitive, easy to check and close to revenue, and in each one you review the work before it goes anywhere. Start with whichever one is closest to your biggest constraint, not the one with the loudest tool.
Most US owners are no longer asking whether to use AI. The question is where to point it first. This guide uses published US data and a simple test so you can choose in an afternoon rather than a quarter.
According to the 2026 Empowering Small Business report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 66% of US small businesses now use AI. That is up from 58% in 2025 and 23% in 2023. The same report lists the most common uses among AI-using businesses: marketing and promotions (41%), improving the customer experience (35%), accounting (31%) and managing customer relationships (31%).
Using AI is not the same as getting value from it. Fortune, reporting on a Goldman Sachs survey of 1,256 small business operators from its small business education program, says only 14% had embedded AI across their core operations, while more than 70% said they would benefit from more training and implementation resources. That sample comes from one program and the figures are self-reported, so treat them as a signal rather than a census. The signal is clear enough: plenty of owners have tried AI, and far fewer have given it a proper job.
The best first jobs share three traits. They repeat every week, a mistake is cheap to catch, and a person can review the output in under a minute. These three fit that description for most owners, in almost any industry.
Look back at the Chamber data. Marketing, customer experience, customer relationships and accounting sit at the top of what US owners actually use AI for. That is not an accident. Those are the jobs where the work is mostly words and routine, and where a first draft saves real time.
The order matters more than the list. If leads go cold because nobody follows up, start with Job 1. If you have plenty of leads but nobody knows what makes you different, start with Job 2 and fix the message before you generate more of it. If you spend Sunday night in a shoebox of receipts, start with Job 3. Owners who skip this step tend to start where the tool is most exciting, not where the business is most stuck.
Run any candidate job through these checks. If it fails two or more, leave it with a person for now.
The last question is the one most owners skip. Without a number, you cannot tell whether AI is saving time or just keeping you busy in a new way. Fortune notes that data privacy is a common concern among small firms using AI, and it is a fair one. Read the data terms of any tool before customer information goes in.
Keep the decisions that define the business: who you serve, what you charge, who you hire, and what you stand for. AI can prepare options and summarize evidence. It cannot know which trade-off you are willing to live with. The best use of the hours you win back is almost always the work only the owner can do, such as talking to customers, strengthening your offer and developing your people.
When you are inside the business every day, everything feels urgent and every tool looks useful. An outsider asks a different question: where is the real constraint, and does this tool touch it? Ideas from other industries help here too. A follow-up routine that works for a dental practice often works for a contractor, and nobody in your own trade is likely to have mentioned it.
Kevin D'Ambros-Smith is a business coach and advisor who has coached 200+ businesses one-on-one across 30+ industries, after a career at DDB, Ogilvy and Saatchi and Saatchi and founding nine companies. He works with US owners online. His approach is to find the real constraint first, then fix it, before you spend another dollar on marketing, hiring or software.
"Working with Kevin has pushed us to step back and look at the business from the outside. He's easy to bounce ideas off, and he keeps us focused on working on the business instead of getting stuck in the day-to-day."
Ben Leitch, Home Lab Store
If you are not sure which kind of help you need first, the short questionnaire at Simple-Growth is a good place to start.
Start with a repetitive, low-risk job that sits next to revenue, such as drafting customer follow-up or marketing first drafts. Pick the one closest to your biggest constraint and keep a person reviewing every output.
Not to begin. Many owners start with general-purpose tools, and paid plans can wait until one job has proven its value. Judge any tool by the number it moves, not by its feature list.
Check the tool's data terms first, and avoid pasting personal customer details unless you are comfortable with how they are stored and used. When in doubt, remove names and account details before you paste.
The US Chamber of Commerce 2026 report found 47% of small businesses say AI is creating jobs today, while 6% say it is enabling headcount reductions. Your own result depends on how you use it.
Yes. Kevin works with US owners online, and the free 30-minute call runs across US time zones.
Walk away with one AI job, one number to track and a clear next step. Book a free 30-minute call with Kevin. It runs online and works across US time zones.
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Kevin and The Simple-Growth Team
Sunday, October 11, 2026
Most SME owners build their people plan around courses. The research behind the 70-20-10 model says courses are the smallest lever you have, and it is worth knowing how shaky that research actually is.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
A lead called within five minutes is up to 100 times more likely to be contacted and 21 times more likely to qualify than one called 30 minutes later. Almost nobody does it.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
Most SME owners think a logo is a brand. The agencies behind the world's biggest brands have never worked that way. Here is the five-layer model they actually use.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
Nearly half of SMEs have run a SWOT analysis in the last two months, yet most cannot say it changed a single decision. Here is the simple matrix that turns the list into action.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
Burger King once sold a one-cent Whopper only to people standing next to a McDonald's. Here is the under-$5k version any SME owner can run, and what a 1760s potter teaches about removing buying risk.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Most small business owners feel confident about their sales pipeline right now. New research shows that confidence is measuring the wrong thing entirely.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Rising revenue and a shrinking bank balance usually mean the same thing: one account doing the job of four. A simple account split fixes it before it becomes a crisis.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
A coaching style that worked in your first month can quietly become the wrong one by your twelfth. The best coaches change how they coach you as you change.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Managers now spend over a fifth of their working week in meetings, and senior leaders admit most of it is wasted. A fixed meeting rhythm fixes more than your calendar.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Most SME owners set ad budgets and discount limits by gut feel. One number, worked out properly, tells you exactly what a customer is worth and what you can afford to spend to win one.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Most small businesses pour their whole marketing budget into this week's sale. The research on 30 years of advertising says that is exactly the wrong ratio.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Most SME owners are confident they will hit this year's goals, and most will not. The fix is not more effort, it is a plan that fits on one page and gets checked every week.
Friday, October 09, 2026
The share of owners blaming the economy for not planning long-term has tripled in a year. Here's the one-page plan that actually fixes it, not excuses it.
Friday, October 09, 2026
A new market, a new product line, a second location: most lose money the same way, by skipping the three numbers that would have told them how big the opportunity really was.
Friday, October 09, 2026
Most people picture coaching as a conversation. The sessions that actually move a business are a loop, repeated every week, until it becomes how the owner thinks.