How to Start Using AI in Your Business This Week
A broker I work with told me he spent his whole Sunday reorganising client folders.
Not on deals. Not on strategy. Reorganising folders.
He's smart. He's busy. He's freaking good at his job.
And he spent his Sunday doing something a system should be doing for him.
I've been there too. And for a while, the advice I gave people about starting with AI wasn't much better.
Here's what most guides get wrong about how to start using AI in your business this week.
They tell you to sign up for a tool.
ChatGPT. Copilot. Zapier. Pick one.
And then nothing changes. Cause you put a new tool on top of a broken process. The paperwork's still there. The chasing is still there. The Sunday folder-sorting is STILL there.
The tool isn't the first move. The process is.
Step 1: Find the One Thing That's Already Breaking Your Week
Don't think about AI. Not yet.
Think about the task you dread most. The one you push to Sunday cause you can't face it during the week.
For most small business owners, it's paperwork. According to Sage's 2025 research, small businesses effectively work 13 months for 12 months of pay, because two full days every month disappear into admin. Two days. Every month. Gone.
That's your starting point. Not AI. The thing eating your time.
For the broker I mentioned? It was document collection. Every deal meant chasing 6-8 clients for the same set of files. Emails. Reminders. Spreadsheet updates. A folder structure that was out of date three weeks after he built it.
That one thing. That's where you start.
Step 2: Map What Actually Happens (Not What Should Happen)
Most processes don't get fixed cause nobody's ever written down what actually happens.
Not what SHOULD happen. What actually happens.
Sit down and write it. Every step. Every handoff. Every "oh I also do this bit." The copy-paste. The re-entering. The checking.
This takes 30 minutes. Most people have never done it.
But here's the thing: once it's written down, the fix becomes obvious. You can see where a system could step in. You can see what a human never needs to touch again.
One of our clients, Eugene at AMA Capital, went through this exercise. His document processing took 45 minutes per deal. Manual, every time. Once we mapped it, the fix wasn't complicated. We built a simple intake system. Now it takes 3 minutes.
Same documents. Same clients. Different process.
A broker I work with told me he spent his whole Sunday reorganising client folders.
Not on deals. Not on strategy. Reorganising folders.
He's smart. He's busy. He's freaking good at his job.
And he spent his Sunday doing something a system should be doing for him.
I've been there too. And for a while, the advice I gave people about starting with AI wasn't much better.
Here's what most guides get wrong about how to start using AI in your business this week.
They tell you to sign up for a tool.
ChatGPT. Copilot. Zapier. Pick one.
And then nothing changes. Cause you put a new tool on top of a broken process. The paperwork's still there. The chasing is still there. The Sunday folder-sorting is STILL there.
The tool isn't the first move. The process is.
Step 1: Find the One Thing That's Already Breaking Your Week
Don't think about AI. Not yet.
Think about the task you dread most. The one you push to Sunday cause you can't face it during the week.
For most small business owners, it's paperwork. According to Sage's 2025 research, small businesses effectively work 13 months for 12 months of pay, because two full days every month disappear into admin. Two days. Every month. Gone.
That's your starting point. Not AI. The thing eating your time.
For the broker I mentioned? It was document collection. Every deal meant chasing 6-8 clients for the same set of files. Emails. Reminders. Spreadsheet updates. A folder structure that was out of date three weeks after he built it.
That one thing. That's where you start.
Step 2: Map What Actually Happens (Not What Should Happen)
Most processes don't get fixed cause nobody's ever written down what actually happens.
Not what SHOULD happen. What actually happens.
Sit down and write it. Every step. Every handoff. Every "oh I also do this bit." The copy-paste. The re-entering. The checking.
This takes 30 minutes. Most people have never done it.
But here's the thing: once it's written down, the fix becomes obvious. You can see where a system could step in. You can see what a human never needs to touch again.
One of our clients, Eugene at AMA Capital, went through this exercise. His document processing took 45 minutes per deal. Manual, every time. Once we mapped it, the fix wasn't complicated. We built a simple intake system. Now it takes 3 minutes.
Same documents. Same clients. Different process.
Step 3: Automate ONE Thing. Not Everything.
This is where people fall down.
They get excited. They try to automate everything at once. They hire consultants. They buy platforms. Six months later, nothing's shipped and they're more buried than before.
I know cause we used to build like that too. Huge systems. Lots of moving parts. Beautiful on paper.
And then the client couldn't use it cause it was too complicated.
Here's what actually works: pick ONE task. The most annoying one. The one you do the most. Automate that first.
For commercial finance brokers, that's usually document collection. Stop emailing clients asking for their bank statements. Build a simple intake portal. Documents come in automatically, named correctly, landed in the right folder. Done.
For a multi-line advisor, it might be the suitability report. Stop retyping the same paragraphs. Build a template that pulls from the fact-find and drafts itself.
ONE thing. This week. Not a plan. A working system.
Step 4: Measure What Changed (Then Decide What's Next)
Give it two weeks.
Track the time it used to take. Track the time it takes now. Write it down.
That number is your business case for everything that comes after. It's what you show the next sceptic in your team. It's what keeps you moving when the next process feels too big to tackle.
Small business owners lose an average of 96 minutes of productivity every day, according to a 2024 Slack survey. You don't recover all of that in week one. But you start chipping away at it. And the compounding is real.
The broker who sorted folders on Sunday? He hasn't done that in three months. Not cause he got a new AI strategy. Cause he automated ONE process. The document intake. And then slowly, one at a time, the Sunday admin started shrinking.
What This Actually Takes
It doesn't take a tech team.
It doesn't take a six-figure software platform.
It takes a clear-eyed look at the thing that's already breaking your week. One process. One fix. This week.
That's how you start using AI in your business. Not with a roadmap. With a decision. ✅
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the easiest AI win for a small business owner this week?
The easiest first win is automating document collection from clients. Instead of emailing back and forth to gather files, a simple intake system does it automatically. Documents land in the right place, named correctly, without chasing. Most small service businesses can have this running inside a week without any coding.
How do I know where to start with AI in my business?
Start with the task you dread most. Write down every step it actually takes, not what is supposed to happen but what really happens. The gaps where a system could do the work instead of you become obvious once it is written down. Pick the most painful step first.
Is AI implementation expensive for small businesses?
Not if you start small. The biggest cost isn't the software. It's building the wrong thing first. Start with one process. Measure the time you save. Use that result to justify the next step. Enterprise platforms charge $600 to $10,000 a month with 100-seat minimums. Custom systems built for your specific workflow cost a fraction of that.
How long does it take to see results from AI in a small business?
Most business owners see meaningful time savings within two weeks of fixing their first process. One of our clients went from 45 minutes of manual document processing per deal to 3 minutes. The speed depends on the complexity of the process, not the technology.
Can I start using AI in my business without a tech background?
Yes. The technical work isn't yours to do. Your job is to describe the process clearly: what happens now, where it breaks, what "done" looks like. A good systems builder takes it from there. You don't need to understand the technology. You need to understand your own workflow.