You’ve probably seen the headlines: most CEOs say AI hasn’t moved the needle on productivity yet. If you own a small business, that headline doesn’t describe your situation. Big companies are full of employees who have every reason to slow walk AI. When it’s just us in the business, AI is like free productivity, and we’re going to see the benefits faster.
What are the CEOs actually saying?
Most CEOs say AI hasn’t moved the needle on productivity or employment yet. Most of them are actively using it, though. So they’re trying, and the results haven’t shown up for them yet.
Why would AI stall inside a big company?
Look at the resources a corporation has. A director of answering the phone is a position in a corporation. They’ve got a lot of people doing a lot of stuff.
Now think about it from the employee’s chair. If you’re working for someone else and here comes AI that can do the stuff you do, are you going to embrace it? Hell no. Self-interest is undefeated.
Employees aren’t incentivized to make AI a part of their day. The smart ones know that if this gets good at their job, they’re going to have to do something else.
Why is it different when I own the business?
We don’t have a director of shoveling the sidewalk when it snows. It’s just us in the business. So when AI shows up, this is like free productivity, and it’s an opportunity to do more than what I was doing before.
That’s why I think we’re going to adopt it faster and see the benefits faster. So when you see the story that says AI is a big nothing burger for corporations, they may be right about corporations. I’ll tell you right now, Claude has changed the business completely.
What does that look like on a normal morning?
AI doubters like to ask, “Yeah, well, what did you do with Claude this morning?” I’ll tell you what I did. I updated the entire strategy of the business based on customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, and projected income. I did that this morning.
Claude also released a small business plugin. It connects to QuickBooks, Canva, HubSpot, Asana, DocuSign, Google Workspace, PayPal, and other software we already use. It comes with a bunch of trained skills too, like closing the month and looking for outstanding invoices.
How should I ask AI to build something for me?
I was at a small business meetup in Chicago, and the guy next to me had a wine collection. He wanted to figure out market rates so he could sell his wine for a profit. I told him to make a dashboard, which Claude can build as a live page that updates anytime you need the information.
To show him, I built a quick one to track the Chicago Cubs. Then I got asked to show it to the whole room and read my prompt out loud, right in front of the company’s director of small business. I can’t remember the last time I was that scared.
I told her I always ask for the outcome that I’m looking for. My prompt was basically, “Hey, I want to be able to follow the Cubs with not a lot of effort. Make me a dashboard.” Then I described it a little bit more. Her answer was, “That’s exactly how you should build a dashboard.”
What should I do this week?
Here’s the homework. If you’re a Claude user, go to connectors, go to plugins, and search for small business. Connect the software you already use.
Then pick one thing in your business you’d like to follow with not a lot of effort. Tell the AI the outcome you want, ask it to make you a dashboard, and describe it a little more from there.
This came from Businessing with Pat Miller. Watch the full May 18, 2026 episode.
More on this topic: AI answers from the Small Business Owners Community