Monday, October 26, 2026
Bain research shows winning a new customer can cost up to 25 times more than keeping one you already have. Here's the CLV/CAC discipline that flips where your sales effort goes.
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.
Prefer to read first? Join The Inside Track newsletter for practical growth ideas twice a week.
Kevin and The Simple-Growth Team
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Habit research shows real change takes an average of 66 days, not three weeks. Here is the Commitment Corridor for judging whether coaching is working before you quit right before it does.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Workers lose roughly ten hours a week to manual, repetitive tasks. Before your next hire, run the Automate-or-Hire Filter to find out if the role should exist at all.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Half your sales team hitting quota means the other half is being carried by one or two people whose method has never been written down. Here is how to fix that before someone resigns.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Seventy six percent of purchase decisions happen at the shelf, not in the weeks of advertising before it. Here is the Shelf Impact Audit for FMCG brands that have never actually tested their own packaging.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Your dashboard has too many numbers and no owner for most of them. Here is the Focus Metric Framework SME owners use to find the one number that actually drives growth this quarter.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Twelve million American businesses worth nearly $10 trillion need new owners within a decade - and most of them, as currently run, cannot be sold. Here is the three-part test that tells you whether yours is one of them, and what to fix first.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Bain found a 5 percent lift in customer retention can boost profits 25 to 95 percent. Here's the Cohort Retention Audit that reveals whether your growth is real or just replacing lost customers.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Research shows much of the feedback we receive is too comfortable to change anything. Here's the Pushback Test that reveals whether your business coach genuinely challenges you or just agrees.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
APA-published research found task switching can cost up to 40 percent of productive time. Here's the Work-in-Progress Cap that stops SME owners starting everything and finishing nothing.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Gartner found B2B buyers now complete 80 percent of their journey before talking to a vendor. Here's the Pitch Refresh Audit that stops your sales team pitching to a buyer who already knows.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Nielsen found 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know over any advertising. Here's the Proof Asset Audit that puts your own customers' stories to work instead.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Most leadership teams spend less than an hour a month on strategy, and half spend none at all. Here is the protected-time system that fixes it, and why accountability is the missing ingredient.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
93% of small business owners expect growth this year — but 75% no longer trust their own bank to fund it. Here's the Cash Flow Runway Check to close the gap.
Friday, September 25, 2026
Most strategic plans die quietly by March — not from a bad plan, but from no system to keep it alive. Here's the 90-minute review that fixes it.
Friday, September 25, 2026
Nearly half of buyers already ask AI platforms to recommend a business like yours. Here's how to make sure you're the one they mention.