Tuesday, October 27, 2026
There's one role almost every SME owner has avoided filling for a year or more — while quietly doing it themselves instead. Here's the Who Not How framework, and the three-step test that makes the hire obvious.
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, October 14, 2026
45 percent of business owners in one survey feel trapped running the business they built. Here's how the Theory of Constraints, pointed at the owner instead of the process, finds the real fix.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
UK SME owners spend six working days a month on admin and 3.6 days on growth, one survey found. Dan Sullivan's Who Not How habit flips which question you ask first.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Nearly half of SMEs in a 2026 survey had not raised prices since 2022. Here's the three-sentence script that makes the overdue price conversation simple instead of stressful.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
76 of 100 B2B brands in a 2026 study fell into a credible-but-indistinguishable Sameness Zone. Here's the four-word positioning test, the Onliness Statement, that pulls a business out of it.
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
Your revenue is up and your margin just fell anyway — here's the planning gap behind it. Four moves that put margin back on the same page as your growth target before next year's numbers are set.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
A practical playbook for NZ construction and building products owners: the market, the real growth constraints, how to price and win work, and a 90-day plan.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
53 percent of small business owners say nothing would change if AI vanished tomorrow, and that is not an adoption problem, it is an embedding problem. Here is the three-question test that shows which one your business actually is.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
New industry research finds most senior consumer goods leaders cannot say whether their last year of promotions actually made money. Here is the Revenue Growth Management discipline that fixes it before Christmas stock ships.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
New research shows 90 percent of small business owners are preoccupied with work outside normal hours. Michael Gerber's E-Myth explains why, and names the one shift that actually fixes it.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Workplace research puts the cost of refocusing after an interruption at around 23 minutes, and the average worker now fields well over 100 messages a day. Here is how to protect the hours that actually move your business.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Forrester research finds only 8 percent of B2B buyers name price as the biggest driver of their decision. Here is how to find out what a price objection is actually about, before you reach for a discount.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
A new Gartner survey finds most B2B buyers would rather research and decide without ever speaking to a salesperson. If your marketing cannot carry the whole sale alone, here is the tool that fixes it.
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
New Gallup data shows only 11 percent of SME owners with staff have a detailed written plan, and most of the rest will try to write next year's in December. Here is the three-date fix to do this week instead.
Monday, October 12, 2026
EOS or Scaling Up? A fair, source-linked comparison for US owners, a five-point checklist to choose, and the growth questions neither operating system answers.
Monday, October 12, 2026
The seven concerns SME owners raise most often in coaching, why each one happens, and what actually helps.