Where do I start with AI in my small business?
Start with your week, not with AI. Write down the jobs that eat your hours or lose you money, then ask of each one whether it needs AI at all. Plenty need nothing more than a saved message, a reminder or a template in tools you already pay for. Bring AI in only where it clearly saves you time.
If you have not started yet, you are in good company. The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that around 11 per cent of small and micro businesses reported using AI in the 2024 to 2025 financial year. Everyone is talking about it, and most small businesses have not started. Working out whether it fits before you spend anything is a sensible place to be.
The wrong place to start is a tool. Someone shows you a demo, it looks clever, and you spend a month trying to find a job for it. The right place is a list of the jobs that already cost you: the calls you cannot take on a job, the quotes written at night, the invoices nobody chases, the roster that changes every Saturday.
Take that list and ask one question of each job: does this need AI at all? Many do not. A missed call can get a text back from a saved reply in your phone. Overdue invoices can get reminders from the accounting software you already pay for. A job that keeps getting forgotten can live on a checklist. Those cost nothing and you can start them on Monday.
Where AI earns its place is the writing and sorting you do over and over: turning rough notes into a quote, drafting the same kind of email yet again, pulling the useful bits out of a long document. Pick the one that costs you the most hours and try it with a free chatbot on real work before you pay anyone for anything.
Keep the judgement calls yours. AI can draft and sort. It cannot know your customers, price a job it has not seen, or stand behind a promise. Check what it writes before it goes out, every time.
If you are not sure where your own list starts, that is the question a Three Fixes report answers. You describe your week, and an AI writes your plan: where AI could help, where you don't need it, and the first steps you can take this week, each one naming the tool it runs in. A$99, once. We don't sell anything else.
Sourced: Around 11 per cent of small and micro businesses reported using AI in the 2024 to 2025 financial year, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Characteristics of Australian Business (https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/business-adoption-artificial-intelligence-accelerates-2024-25)
The way in
Not sure where to start with AI in your business?
This page answers one question. Give our AI 15 minutes and get a starting plan written from your week: where AI could help, the first steps you can take this week, what agencies will try and sell you, what they usually charge, and the questions to keep them honest.
Show me where to startA$99, once. An AI writes it from your answers. We don't sell anything else.
Want to look around first? Read a full example report, or see every question we answer.