043: Your AI Head Start

Hi there

I have spent most of my working life inside big companies. I still spend much of my year there, coaching leaders and giving keynotes on AI and leadership.

Then I go home and run a business with no IT department and no marketing team.

For a long time I thought that is the tougher life. I changed my mind lately, and I want to tell you why.

Time to read: 7 minutes

In this edition:
1. The Small Business Head Start
2. Client story on AI
3. One Last Thing: Back at the University of Zurich

The Small Business Head Start

Inside a big company, AI arrives with a budget, licences, an IT team and a rollout plan. And a numbers of steps to get things approved beforehand.

And still, often it happens that people do not feel that AI is theirs, it's for them.

Nobody has shown them what it does for their own Tuesday morning. And by the time a tool decision has been through security, legal and three steering meetings, half a year is gone.

This is why I keep going to the Claude meetups in Zürich. Four since July, and the room gets fuller every time. Two weeks ago at Adnovum I heard the same story again from people inside banks and insurers: the demo worked, the board approved, and months later the same person was still copying the report by hand.

I go there for the user stories more than for the demos. (Btw if you are not from Zürich, go on Luma and look for Claude meetups in your city.)

Now look at a small business owner. None of that is in the way.

You decide. You can pick a tool on Monday and have it running by Wednesday. You feel the result on your own desk, in your own week. And you just got a new colleague, or three.

I know this as a founder. I run The Change Republic without an IT department or a marketing team. One of my AI workers takes care of my website so that AI assistants recommend me. Another collects my receipts for the bookkeeping. Nobody had to approve either of them.

This is the bit I had not seen before. I came from large corporates, I work with large corporates, and I had never seen how much easier the start is for the small ones. The small business has really a big head start.

I wish more owners would use it. Getting started is easy, and the first pain points are the same in almost every small business I look at.

Client Story on AI

A few weeks ago I sat at the laptop of a small business owner who has run her business for 25 years. Twenty-five years, a fantastic business with real history.

And once again, I hear the same sentence what a lot of business owners say: "I have been to AI events, but nobody translated any of it into my business. I don't know how I can make use of it."

So that is what I do now. I sit down with the owner, at their own laptop, and we look at three things first.

Being found. Ask an AI assistant for [your kind of business] in [your city]. It names a dozen. Most small businesses are never one of them.

The customer list. There are usually three: the accounting software, a spreadsheet, and a sign-up form on the website that has been collecting addresses for years. Nobody has ever written to those people.

The small jobs that go to other people or never get done: the social media posts, the newsletter, the receipts for the bookkeeper.

Most small businesses look like this before anyone sits down with the owner and the tools for an afternoon. That is normal.

By the end of such an afternoon there is an assistant on the owner's own laptop, connected to their mail and their files, and the first social media posts are drafted from material they already own. The owner decides at the table. It is running before I leave.

I wrote the three down, with the tests that go with them. The Small Business Check: twelve statements and three tests you can do yourself, about 30 minutes, in English or German.

If you work in a large company, you still know an owner. Your hairdresser, your accountant, the friend who went independent and does consulting since last year. Forward them this edition.

And if you run a business and want it set up with you, at your place, on your own systems, this is the work I now do with small business owners in Switzerland.

One Last Thing: Back at the University of Zurich

On 22 October I go back to the University of Zurich. Fourteen years ago I studied finance there, while I was expecting my son. I wrote on LinkedIn why this one is personal.

This time I am there for the first UZH.ai Business-Academia Hackathon. The theme is the human side of bringing generative AI into organisations. It is the same story I keep hearing at the Claude meetups.

DSV, Swiss Re, Syngenta and KPMG bring real cases from their own companies. Student teams from every discipline spend two days on them at Bluelion Zürich. Nobody needs to code.

Prof. Dr. Lauren Howe opens with the research. I follow with what I see inside companies, and how people keep control as AI takes on more of their work.

Bachelor students from their second year, Master's and PhD students can register until Sunday, 11 October. If there is a UZH student in your life, forward them this.

Before I Go

There is probably one small job on your desk this week that an assistant could take.

Which one would you hand over first? Hit reply and tell me, I read every answer.

Talk soon,

P.S. The check exists in German too. For the owner in your life who does not read English newsletters.

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