Lately, it seems AI is either here to save us, re- place us, or ruin everything. I’ve been thinking about how to help you sort the signal from the noise. First of all, it’s not evil and it’s not going to destroy your business. You can make better judgments about AI once you start using it. AI is already helping me with coaching, marketing, and troubleshooting.
Be a better mentor or coach
I volunteer as a mentor to small business people with SCORE.org. During a typical coaching session (my specialty is digital marketing and social media); I often suggest that my clients do market research. Then I share the screen and let my client ask questions (in the AI world, they’re called prompts, not questions) of ChatGPT, such as:
People aren’t responding to my Facebook posts. What should I do? What price should I charge for my product or service, based on competitors in my immediate vicinity? Can you craft a business plan for me so I can get a loan? How many com- petitors for my service are there in the following zip codes? (Competition is usually fierce for landscapers, home repair and remodeling, beauty salons, food trucks, restaurants, book- keeping, and child care, among many others.) The beauty of ChatGPT is that the client, with my help, can make follow-up prompts and get deeper and better research. The more specific your prompts, the better will be the answers you get. Don’t be afraid to use a prompt that’s 250 words long. Just be specific.
Caution – Obviously, the client has to be cautioned that these answers need to be checked. The tool will sometimes produce outdated information or even invent some in order to satisfy the query. For deeper recommendations, I suggest technology and management guru Ethan Mollick’s Using AI right now: A quick guide. https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/ using-ai-right-now-a-quick-guide
Marketing – Like any nonprofit, we need to recruit people and donors and we need to do it without a big marketing budget.
So at the suggestion of a colleague, I used my iPhone at one of our social events to record a series of interviews of SCORE volunteers about why they volunteer and what they get out of it. I then edited the interviews. You can do this with iMovie, which has gotten much easier to use, or any other free tool you like. I produced 10 videos of around 30 seconds each. There was some background noise, but I think my colleagues come off as sincere and credible, perhaps because of the casual, improvised nature of the videos. I posted them to my YouTube channel. They’ve gotten over 500 views.
Troubleshoot technical problems
Whenever I’m having trouble getting a device or an app to do what I want it to do, I no longer use the HELP or SUP- PORT buttons that come with that service. I get far better solutions from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity. 1. I could not get my Apple messaging app to send messages to my contacts using Android phones. ChatGPT walked me through about a dozen different troubleshooting scenarios (the tone of the chatbot’s responses gradually started to sound as frustrated as I was!). Finally, it boiled down to one setting buried deep, deep, deep within the bowels of the iPhone. I never would have figured this out in a million years, and the supposed help sections for the hardware and software were useless. 2. Anoth- er time, my thumb strayed and hit the wrong key on the TV remote, and an annoying robot voice started announcing the names of shows in the screen directory. I consulted the TV’s paper manual, its online help site, replaced the remote’s bat- teries, restarted the TV several times — nada. Turns out the robot voice is driven by a well hidden setting designed for the blind and visually impaired (a wonderful, thoughtful feature!). I never thought to look at that setting. But that solved it.
Have questions? Reach out to SCORE for free, expert mentoring and resources to guide you through your small business journey. Visit score.org to learn more.
