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Are you thinking about investing in AI for your small company? The buzz about AI seems to be everywhere, but is there real value, especially for small businesses? For me, the answer is a definite yes, as long as you're careful about how you approach it. Over the past nearly three years, I have found AI to be a force multiplier for my small business.
To help you see how AI might help your business, I'm going to show you many of the ways AI has helped my business. All told, across all three years since ChatGPT hit the market, I've probably spent less than $1,000. And, $200 of that was in one big sprint that netted me four complete new products. So yeah. Worth it.
Our small business
My wife and I own a small content business. We have a variety of different brands and reach a bunch of different target markets, but the common factor is that we produce and sell digital content. The work itself is similar across all of our business areas, and includes writing, web development, coding, video production, marketing, analytics, and relationship management.
Also: The moment I realized ChatGPT Plus was a game-changer for my business
Keep in mind that we do all this as a two-person business, run out of our house. Although we used to have employees, I didn't enjoy being a boss, and we have no plans to hire. That's important because our use of AI isn't taking someone else's job. What it is doing is enabling the two of us to do more in the available time we have.
I'm going to spend a few minutes discussing the areas we're involved in, as that will help set the context for how the AI features we use have been put to work. Odds are, you are involved in one or more of these areas yourself.
For each work activity, I'll enumerate the tasks we've delegated or collaborated with the AIs to accomplish, for a total of 21 ways we've benefited. I'll also point out the tools we've been using for each of these productivity-boosting tasks.
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