How to Use AI to Grow a Small Business

If you own a small business, chances are you're always trying to find ways to save time and use the time you have more effectively. There are lots of tools available, but the most accessible and personalizable may just be AI. Here's how I use AI tools like ChatGPT and related apps like Grammarly to save valuable time and grow myself.

Photo: Jacob Bobo 

ChatGPT has changed the way I work 

ChatGPT is the everything AI tool. You can ask it to do just about anything, from writing an email to summarizing a lengthy document. It's the premier Large Language Model (LLM) AI chatbot. There's a free version of ChatGPT and a $19.99 a month subscription option. Both have access to the latest ChatGPT-4o model. 

It can answer basic questions, usually faster than a Google search, but also solve complex math equations and create spreadsheet tables. Anything you can think of, ChatGPT will, at the very least, have a response for you. It's trained on pretty much all of human history and can give the illusion it's thinking like a human, so it always has something to say.  

How I Use It:

• Search engine
• Headline brainstorm partner
• TO-DO List
• Calculator
• Table/Chart maker
• Kid entertainer -- My kids love talking to ChatGPT, asking it questions and having it create photos of them as ninjas or superheroes 

Now, it's never perfect at any of those, but it's so much better than the individual alternatives. Rather than flip-flopping between thirty different tools, I can keep everything in one place.

When I need good headlines for my blog posts, or I want to quickly whip up a PowerPoint deck on a particular concept that I can edit and refine later, ChatGPT is fantastic and saves me lots of time.

Whenever I encounter technical problems in a different app -- let's say I'm trying to figure out how to use a web builder tool -- I use ChatGPT as my first-line tech support. It helps me troubleshoot by providing potential solutions or guiding me to resources that can help.

ChatGPT has changed my life and the way I interact with everything. I use it to make to-do lists, organize my thoughts, devise plans to tackle business challenges and determine what to focus on. It also helps me create invoice and contract templates, saving time by providing a solid starting point for these documents.

It's become my default "Search Engine." Mostly because I can use voice dictation to talk to it, ramble on, ask a question in as clunky a way as possible, and still usually get the answer I'm looking for. 

Prompting AI for Personal Growth

I wanted to improve my small business pitching skills, particularly when it comes to approaching companies. To practice, I used ChatGPT as a stand-in for a potential client looking for SEO services and intentionally made it hard for myself to close the deal. This exercise helped me think through questions and scenarios that I hadn't considered before, preparing me to handle similar challenges from real clients. I found that the more creative I was with ChatGPT, the more opportunities I found. 

In addition to brainstorming and problem-solving, ChatGPT has been an excellent resource for learning and development. I often use it to get quick explanations of complex concepts or to explore new ideas. For example, if I'm considering a new marketing strategy, I can ask ChatGPT for an overview and get a concise, easy-to-understand explanation. This has saved countless research hours and helped me make more informed decisions.

Photo: Eric Franklin/OpenAI 

It's also a fantastic brainstorming partner for this reason. I can spontaneously talk to it about an idea or concept and have it give me feedback, and then tell it to refine the answer. 

My biggest issue with ChatGPT is that you can't always trust it. Sometimes, it just hallucinates random details about a known subject. You always need to look out for this, even when you prompt it to be honest and not make stuff up. So always double-check and confirm any hard facts it gives you. 

Grammarly is the AI editor I've always needed

I worked as a tech reporter and reviewer for many years and was fortunate to have great editors. However, they weren't always available, and when you're running on fumes and butting up against a deadline at 3AM, a tool like Grammarly is an absolute godsend. It's become one of the essential parts of my business.

Grammarly as a brand has been around since 2009, but the company describes the current version of the tool as "an AI-powered writing assistant that can unblock ideas and keep you in a steady flow state," and starting in 2023, it added "contextually aware generative AI writing assistance." So what was once a simple grammar checker is now a full-fledged AI writing assistant. 

Photo: Eric Franklin/Grammarly 

That means it not only identifies and corrects grammatical errors and typos, but also offers suggestions to enhance sentence clarity and conciseness, using a combination of machine learning and natural language processing. This can significantly improve the overall flow of the text.

Photo: Eric Franklin/Grammarly 

For entrepreneurial written content creators who don't have an editor or for teams of writers who are creating lots of content, and who don't necessarily have time to wait for a single editor to edit their stuff, Grammarly is an excellent second option. It's not always going to replace a skilled human editor who can identify when sentences don't make sense or call out when concepts aren't clear enough, but it's a great tool I consider essential for my business.

Like ChatGPT, however, it does have its flaws and can make up solutions to problems that don’t actually exist within the writing, as AI lacks the ability to understand context.

How to Make the Most of Grammarly's AI tools

When I first tried Grammarly, I couldn't believe how effectively it improved most sentences and even entire paragraphs I wrote. The real-time suggestions for grammar, punctuation, and style were invaluable, especially when I didn't have someone else to edit my work.

Sometimes, a paragraph or sentence just doesn't sound right. With Grammarly, I can highlight a section and have it attempt to improve it. It doesn't completely rewrite the text, but the minor tweaks can turn slightly clunky text into something anyone can easily understand. And yes, this paragraph you're reading now was improved by Grammarly (and human editors).

The great thing is that you can always easily reject the suggestion and go with what you already have or take bits and pieces of an idea to make your original even better. Grammarly gives you plenty of options.

Not all suggestions are correct, though -- for some reason, it loves to put a period at the end of H2 headers -- but it's helpful in most cases. And it convinced me enough that I signed up for an entire year.

Grammarly offers a free plan with basic grammar and spelling checks. For more advanced features, I chose the $12 per month Premium plan, which includes AI suggestions for clarity, engagement, and tone. There's also a Business plan at $12.50 per user per month, which adds team management and style guide features. 

Beyond correcting errors, Grammarly has helped me become a better writer. For instance, I've become better at structuring my sentences for clarity and impact, removing unnecessary words. It's funny. I've written professionally for decades, but I am only now noticing how many useless words I still bake into my sentences. 

Conclusion

AI tools, including ChatGPT and Grammarly have completely changed the game, and it's scary to think how they will only improve. Grammarly's AI-powered benefits to small businesses are obvious, even if you're not in the business of writing for a living. It helps with emails, proposals, marketing, and more.

For a business to use ChatGPT effectively, it must practice prompting it the right way. That takes some experimentation and maybe guidance, but once you start thinking creatively, the possibilities for how it can help you get better and more efficient are almost limitless.