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About 35% of current jobs in the UK are at high risk of computerisation over the following 20 years, according to a study by researchers at Oxford University and Deloitte. Go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34066941 and type your job title into the search box below to find out the likelihood that it could be automated within the …
Hugh Johnston also revealed where the company is drawing hard lines on spending.
Some inventors aren’t motivated by financial considerations and give their patents or profits away. The rest of us need incentives
One of my clients came to me with a high-stakes pitch to request a budget and head count for her team. She had built a beautiful and thorough deck with revenue charts, growth graphs, staffing history, and supporting data. Buried somewhere behind all t…
A quiet but meaningful shift is happening in how people communicate—and most organizations don’t yet recognize its health and business implications.
Over the past 15 years, research shows that people are speaking hundreds of fewer words per day, re…
When ChatGPT was first released in 2022, I, like many people, gave it a try. I was mesmerized by how quickly it could generate a poem about my morning bagel. However, after giving it a few work-related tasks, I abandoned it. Not for me, I thought, finding the output too shallow or unreliable.
Fast-forward almost six years, and AI is now deeply embedded in the workflows of my solo business. I’ve learned how to work with the technology and guide it to the result I want.
Back in 2022, when I decided that AI didn’t work for me, the real problem was the way I’d set it up. Yes, the models have gotten substantially better, but AI frustration often comes from not knowing how to work with the tools. It’s understandable, since AI doesn’t come with an explicit “how-to” guide the way other software does.
The advantage of running a business by yourself is that you can try new AI tools, run a few tests, and change your setup quickly. Here are some common problems I’ve run into, and how I’ve solved them.
Problem 1: Not having a clear use case for AI
Census Bureau data shows that companies with four or fewer employees have an AI adoption rate of 20%. Compare that with 37% of firms with at least 250 employees.
Certainly, large companies are more complex and may have a greater need for AI. But they also have more resources. They can run 10 pilot programs and write off 9 of them. You may try one or two scenarios, without good results, and feel like you’ve wasted your time.
Regardless of size, every company or solo business has to start with the same question: How exactly can AI benefit me in this specific scenario? An approach of “I should be using AI for something” won’t work. It’s too open-ended, and you don’t have a clear idea of what you’re looking for.
I start by asking myself, What am I doing that’s repetitive? A task you do every week and dislike is a great place to start. Then get specific about where AI fits into the task.
For example, let’s say you want AI to help you write social media posts for LinkedIn. “Write social media posts” is not a good prompt because you’ll end up with generic AI slop. But dictating your ideas, letting AI format the dictation into social media posts, and then letting AI send the drafts to a social media scheduling tool is a genuine time-saver.
Problem 2: Using a single AI tool for every task
Many solopreneurs start with a general-purpose chatbot (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini). When the output is mediocre, the technology gets the blame. But sometimes it’s just not the right tool for the task. Useful tasks are often micro use cases: AI aimed at one narrow problem, and only that problem.
I use an app called Airtable to manage my business, and I constantly need to update information. If I add a new client, I log the client’s address. Now I can just add my client’s website, and Airtable AI can fetch the client’s address for me.
Plenty of software you already pay for has AI built into it, and that’s often the better option. It’s designed with that product’s data and that product’s workflow. Often, this is a onetime setup: You add the AI feature to a specific task, and then it runs in the background.
Problem 3: Lack of context
General-purpose chatbots can still play a role in your business, but many people don’t take the time to give the AI tool the right context. Think of it as onboarding a contractor (without implying that an AI tool is anything close to human). Whenever you hand over work, you need to provide specifics about the job that needs to be done and what you’re expecting to receive at the end of the task.
Every project I have set up in Claude comes with lengthy documentation about who I am, what I do, and how I expect Claude to help. Without it, the output comes back generic, and generic output is exactly what makes people decide AI can’t do a task.
That means I’m putting in time up front, sometimes a lot of time. The payoff later is real in reclaimed hours, but the setup is what some solopreneurs skip. They want to prove that the task is worth handing over to AI, so they skip straight to prompting and review the result. That never works without the up-front context.
Continue to review and refine your AI processes
A cofounder of Clay shared the software company’s internal AI policy on LinkedIn. The first guiding principle is that employees using AI must stand by every idea and sentence in the AI output.
AI is not autonomous, no matter how good the output looks. With anything that AI generates for me, I make the final call on its accuracy and usefulness.
The other half is refinement. If the output comes back wrong the same way every time, the fix is usually more context or clearer instructions. The more of your own judgment you build into the setup, the more useful and time-saving AI will be.
The crypto billionaire says he has a donor-advised fund but no plans to start a foundation, joining Elon Musk in casting doubt on traditional giving.
This article is written by Tina Hamilton, an Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) member in Philadelphia and the founder and CEO of myHR Partner, a human resources outsourcing firm that manages HR for small and midsize businesses throughout the United Sta…
One of Nina Sodhi’s most priceless memories is taking her son on a trip around the world during his summer vacation. The two traveled east until they hit the international date line. When their 55-day voyage ended, it was time for her son to go back t…
A new podcast series based on the McKinsey Global Institute’s most recent book explains why another century of broad-based human progress is within reach.
