Where to Start with AI: The Honest Answer for Small Business Owners

You cannot start a trip if you don't know where you are. A map only works if you have a starting point. Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Dr.

Mike Donaldson. Today, we're going to talk about where you start with AI. The answer is not that it's a tool, it's not a platform, and it's not a strategy. The honest answer starts with knowing where you are right now.

Okay, so most business owners, they skip that part. And once they start buying tools and go and implement things, then that's when everything starts to go sideways. Before we get into it, please take a moment and subscribe, drop your comments or questions, and I will be happy to answer them. And please subscribe.

It's not hard. It'll make me happy, too. OK, so let's start with the problem. And I'm going to paint a picture for you.

We've all been there. We've probably done a project like this themselves. You got a room, and you need to paint. So you go to the store.

You're excited. You pick out your colors. You look at the samples in the store, and you buy your paint. And then you head home.

Get ready to start to paint the room. You look at the can, you open it up, and that's when everything starts. You look at the color. It doesn't quite look right in the room with the lighting, but you're going to start with it anyway.

So you grab a brush, but it's not the right size brush. It's too big. You're not going to be able to cut into the corners or up at the ceiling with that brush. Then you look at your rollers.

They've been sitting in the garage for so long. They're all dried out. They're no good. You can't use them.

So you can't even roll it out. Then you look at the floor. You don't have tarps. You didn't even plan to have tarps on the floor, you can get paint on the floor, and then you still have furniture in the room.

So your enthusiasm was there, you're ready to go, but your starting point was a no -go. You didn't know where you were. So the question you've got to ask is, was painting the walls, is that even the goal? Or is this a full room refurbishment where you can replace the trim or you're replacing the carpet?

What is the end goal? This is where scope matters. You cannot plan the sequence of events to go down a path if you don't know what your scope is. And that's what I see with AI.

Lots of times owners are signed up, they get started, they get stuck, and it's not because the tool is bad. It's because they didn't have a plan to start with. They went and bought a tool because it looked great. Everybody said it was awesome, so let's go get it.

But they did not know where they were starting from. It's like any trip. You have to know where you are to know where you're going. But right now, What I see is lots of companies and small businesses are in a crossroads.

They're at an intersection with no signs and no direction. You don't know which way to go. Guy is out there, but do you go right? Do you go left?

People give you instructions, go forward, go left, go right, left turn, right turn. But if your starting point is off, we're all going to end up in a different place and not where we want to be. So sometimes business owners, they'll buy the tools and start moving forward and it feels like progress. But then you discover that it's not always good progress, and it could cost you more money in the long run.

All right, this is a readiness question. Before we do anything, we need to know, are we ready for AI? It's not about that you're excited. We know we're excited about AI.

Everybody's looking at it, trying to get the next best thing, and companies and publishers are making the new tools all the time. There's always advancements. And you can't worry about what your competitors are doing either. The real question about readiness is, is your operation ready to absorb AI and actually benefit from it.

Think about that. Are you ready for AI? AI accelerates what already exists, good or bad. A solid process means that you are going to move faster and better.

A broken process is just a faster broken process. AI does not fix broken stuff. Wait before you buy a tool. Don't sit through a demo.

Take an honest inventory. You've got to walk that room before you paint it and look at all the details and figure out what it is that you need, what your goals are, and where you want to end up and lay it out. Okay, so there's an inventory that I'm suggesting. There's three things that you need to look at.

Number one, your processes. Are they written down? That's first. Are they repeatable or are they in your head or someone else's head?

Because if there is a key person that left tomorrow, is the business going to keep running or is everything going to come to a screeching halt? That's a key step. You've really got to be honest about that AI cannot inherit a process that does not exist If it's on someone's head, it's not document AI cannot see it. It cannot read your mind.

All right Second thing in your inventory is the pain factor. I've talked about this on other podcasts Where are you actually bleeding hours right now? Not where you think you should be efficient or the areas that you want to go fix Where are you losing time? All right, then You've got to look at your expectations.

What do you think AI will do? If you think it's going to handle everything, and it's going to fix all your problems, you need a better definition. It's not going to do that. AI handles tasks.

It doesn't handle culture. It does not handle judgment. And it does not create strategy. That's your job.

AI is just tasks. It will only execute what you give it. So for your readiness inventory, what you're looking at are three things, process, pain, expectations. That's it.

Keep it at that. Now where people get this wrong is, and this is real, FOMO, the fear of missing out. The headlines are loud. We all hear it.

We see it on posts. We see it on LinkedIn. We see it everywhere. Vendors are calling.

They're persistent with selling you the next big tool. And some owners are told directly that if you don't adopt AI this year, you're going to go out of business. Sounds like things that were said back when the internet started as well. That's fear -based messaging.

Don't fall in for that. And it's not a strategy. Here's some statistics for you. AI adoption in 2025 dropped from 42 % to 28 % in one year.

People just walked away. But why did they walk away? It's not because AI doesn't work. It's there was no clear purpose for what they were doing and what was going on.

Tools were chased and not problems. Focusing on that, remember, you've got to look at the problems first, not the tools. Those business owners bought three or four tools and signed up right away. 60 days later, and $400 per month, they're barely using them, they walked away.

So that financial cost is real. And there's a bigger cost, and that's called paralysis. You have too many tools, and none of them work well, and then you get stuck, you're not sure what to do. And I get it, the pressure to keep up, it's legitimate.

Speed without a starting point. It's just a scatter plot. It's like a shotgun blast. All right, you're going fast, but you're aiming at things going down the road and you're not going to hit what you're aiming at.

You're going too fast. If you put AI on a broken workflow, the mess is just moving faster. I say this a lot and I will keep saying it. You put AI on a broken process and you've just got a fast, hot mess.

Look at your process and you ask, would I be comfortable if this ran twice as fast or 24 hours a day? If there is any hesitation, or no, you got a process problem, not a tools problem. You've got to fix that first. Now, where do you start?

Step one, you take the inventory. 30 minutes, write down your three most time consuming, reoccurring tasks. Not what you think, not the most strategic, the ones that consume time. This is where you begin.

All right. Now, step two, the honest question. Is each process documented well enough for someone to follow it. Someone new, not someone that's already done the process.

Someone new, someone has no idea how the operation works. Can they follow that process and complete it to the expectations that you have established? If not, you got to document first. It's not AI process first.

And I know, I know it's not sexy. It's not glamorous. It's boring. My five year old would say it's so boring, but you have to do it.

It's critical if you want AI to work. properly. You have to have your process documented. Now, all the three things you looked at, which one has the best process you can work with that you've got something in place?

Okay. All right. You pick one problem, not three, not five, just one. And it should be the most time consuming one that is already consistent.

You get one task, one tool, then you measure it. That's it. That's where you start. Step four.

You need to know your process criteria before you start. Most people miss this. You've got to check it first. How much time should this save?

Not what you think it'll save. What does good look like? That is something that comes out of project management. You need to know what good and done look like.

If you can't define it, you're not ready to do a pilot yet. You need to know what your end goal is going to look like. It's like that room. You have to have the vision of what it's going to look like before you start.

And then you can get on a good solid path to get it done. All right. Now the goal of all of this, it's not to be first. Don't worry about being first.

Don't worry about falling behind. Your goal is to build something that works and lasts. You build one solid AI process that's running cleanly in three months. And you are way ahead of Anyone out there that bought six tools and abandoned all of them.

So don't worry about your competitors worry about you All right, the honest answer here. You've got to know your current state and you have to start there It can't be someone else's benchmark You have to know your state and I know that's a little boring, but you have to go do it. That's the work I know FOMO is real. I'm not dismissing that the fear of being left behind is real.

I get it, but durable businesses they knew when they started out what they were going to do, where they were going before they took a first step. They didn't just start buying things. They paused and took a moment. Pause, take a moment, understand where you are before you move forward.

Now, your assignment. Write down your three most time -consuming tasks. Is each one documented? The one that is, pick it.

Move forward with that one only and get started. That's your assignment. Should you accept it? Go do it.

All right. That's all I have for you today. Please take a moment and submit a review. Helps me.

It helps the podcast. It helps other people find me just like you did. And it'll make me feel good. All right.

I'm Dr. Mike. Thank you for listening and you have an excellent day.