It has been 18 months since the Small Business Administration began emphasizing the importance of incorporating artificial intelligence into business consulting. Our Small Business Development Center staff here in Southeast Idaho attended a national conference last September that offered more than a dozen AI workshops.

Despite taking a similar number of trainings over the past year, I’m still not completely comfortable with AI. At the same time, I feel like I’m falling further behind. Most AI guides for small businesses are very general. They tend to explain what AI can do — but not how to do it.

What finally helped me use AI in ways that benefit my small business clients was watching others use it and seeing what they had created with it. Instead of “learning” AI, I would say I, more accurately, warmed up to it. Here’s how that process started:

I subscribed to ChatGPT about a year ago and began experimenting with it. Full confession: for the first two months, I used it almost exclusively to find emojis and plan travel itineraries. But that time wasn’t wasted. While using it to answer whatever came to mind, I became more comfortable with what AI can do — and that gave me the confidence to experiment further.

I also watched a lot of people write prompts. A prompt is the question or instruction you give an AI platform to guide its response. (For example, I recently wrote a prompt: “Write me a draft business plan for a restaurant that specializes in soup.”) The best AI workshop leaders demonstrated prompt writing live, so I could see instant results. I quickly learned that the more detailed the prompt, the better the output. And you can continue refining prompts until you get exactly what you want. After that soup restaurant plan, I added, “Include any certifications or permits I would need in Pocatello, Idaho.” Sure enough, AI added the appropriate health department and food handler permits.

If you can’t attend an AI workshop, YouTube is full of prompt-writing demonstrations.

Besides drafting business plans, I asked AI to make a sales prospect list. I have a client who makes handmade gifts that sell well at gift shops, florists and wedding venues. After working on their marketing plan, we decided cold calling local businesses would be the best sales strategy. In the past, creating a prospect list meant spending time manually searching Google Maps for each town. With AI, I used this prompt:

“Make me a list of all gift shops, florists and wedding venues in Pocatello, Blackfoot and Idaho Falls, ID. Group the list by city, and include business names, addresses and phone numbers.” In about 20 seconds, my client had a list of 20 businesses to visit — sorted by city.

Over the last six months, I have used AI to help answer all kinds of business questions — calculating valuations for buying or selling a business, creating website taglines from business descriptions, researching licensing requirements for a spa repair business in Utah and even checking this article for grammar and style.

However, I did NOT use AI to write this article. AI can make mistakes — or, as the techies say, it “hallucinates.” I often use AI to draft business plans, but I always revise, customize and fact-check the information. I use AI for valuations, but I compare its estimates to several other valuation methods. I use AI to create prospect lists, but I know some entries may be outdated. I use AI to generate taglines, but the client always chooses their favorite. Trust — but verify.

The Small Business Development Center can help your business learn to leverage AI — whether you’re using ChatGPT, Gemini or another product (most offer free trials). We can help you write effective prompts, identify AI tools that simplify daily tasks and raise awareness about risks and best practices.

“Poking around” is still one of the best ways to get started. Ask AI questions about whatever is on your mind. Watch YouTube videos of people writing business-related prompts. And, as always, take the internet — and AI — with a grain of salt.