As a small business owner, I’ve learned to operate lean and mean, and constantly weighing effort versus reward. When you’re bootstrapping, every decision matters. Every hour counts.
Over the years, I’ve embraced tools and platforms that make my life easier, help me work smarter, and allow me to focus on the parts of my business that matter.
But to use AI to grow? That took me a while.
An Unexpected Lesson
I was skeptical. Resistant, even. My fear wasn’t about the technology itself, it was about losing my voice. My brand. The heart behind what I do. As the founder of Bright Littles, everything w create is rooted in connection, empathy, and meaningful conversations. The idea of handing that over to a machine felt… wrong.
That all changed in the most unexpected place.
I was sitting in a tiny café in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, a 17th-century village tucked into the mountains, where time seems to slow down and you can reconnect and recharge.
Because the café was smaller than a postage stamp, I found myself sharing a table with a stranger who, like me, had one foot in vacation mode and one foot in the office.
Eventually, we struck up one of those easy conversations.
“What brings you here?”
“What do you do?”
At the time, he was working on a proposal and casually mentioned he was using ChatGPT.
Curious, I asked how he was prompting it. That simple question opened the door to a much bigger conversation.
Before I knew it, this lovely human was walking me through how he used AI, not as a replacement for his work, but as an assistant. Then he turned the tables and asked about Bright Littles. As I explained what I do, he started offering ideas in real time: ways I could research faster, organize content, and reduce the mental load of repetitive tasks.
AI – A Happy Surprise
That was the game changer. The mindset shift was subtle but powerful:
To use AI to grow isn’t something you “prompt. ” It’s something you direct. Instead of asking it to “write something”, I learned to say: I need you to create X for Y. What else do you need from me to complete this task well?
That single shift felt like a key clicking into a lock. I’ve always considered myself an outside-the-box thinker, but ironically, that same thinking had put me in a box. I was getting in my own way when it came to growing my business. Once I reframed AI as an assistant rather than a creator, everything changed.
Suddenly, I could:
- Build content calendars more efficiently
- Cross-check past work to eliminate duplication
- Refine and tighten ideas without starting from scratch
And that list continues to grow as I expand the way I think about “assistance mode.”
Most importantly, I wasn’t using AI to do my work, I was using it to handle the foundational ingredients that slowed me down. The scaffolding. The setup. The busywork that kept me buried in day-to-day tasks, so I could focus on what actually moved the sales needle.
And here’s the truth I didn’t expect: before AI, I had lost some of my spark.
Not because I didn’t love my business or believe in it any less—but because I was stretched thin. The to-do list was heavy, the days were full, and I had less time for the very things that made us successful in the first place: making sure our message truly resonated, helping families feel connected to our “why, ” and staying deeply aligned with our mission.
What I didn’t need was another tool—I needed an (A)ss(I)stant.
AI gave me time back.
Time to think.
Time to create.
Time to reconnect with the heart of my business.
Your Small Business Can Use AI to Grow Too
For small businesses, that’s the real opportunity. AI doesn’t have to strip away your voice in my case, it helped protect it. When used intentionally, it allows you to spend less time stuck in the weeds and more time showing up where your voice matters most.
Your brand voice doesn’t get lost when you use AI. It gets stronger—because you finally have the space to nurture it.
And sometimes, all it takes is a tiny café in a city rooted in the past, a shared table, and a simple conversation to unlock an entirely new way of thinking forward.
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