AI Employee or AI Tool? What Small Business Owners Should Know
Who’s Getting the Carpet Cleaner?
On Saturday I went to the grocery store to rent a carpet cleaner. A tropical storm was headed for Southern California, so everyone else was there stocking up. Oh my gosh, the place was packed.
My store doesn’t have a help desk anymore. One woman watches over the cashiers and the self-checkouts, and she handles whatever goes wrong. When I told her what I needed, she said, “We’re so busy and I’m all by myself and I can’t help you now.”
I told her that was okay and I’d wait until she had time. I wasn’t coming back on a storm weekend without that machine. (Cue me settling in by the registers like I lived there, scrolling FB marketplace for my next big find.)
Three more times she came over to say she couldn’t help me yet. I heard how someone had to go get the key and someone else had to unload a truck. Meanwhile I could see stock people and a couple of cashiers with nobody in their lines.
Then the shift changed. A new woman came on, and I heard the first woman fill her in about me. A few minutes later the new woman walked over. “She said you’re here for a carpet cleaner. Let me get you taken care of right away.”
There was no list of reasons. She found one of the guys standing around in the back and sent him for the machine. While he was gone she rang me up, and then he helped me carry it to my car.
The whole thing took about five minutes. Shell yes!
The first woman thought she was the only one who could get that carpet cleaner. The second woman knew better.
It’s just like this in our business. Then I got home, put the carpet cleaner down, and scrolled my feed before diving into the grime on my area rug.
Is an AI employee the same as an AI tool?
Two posts about “AI employees” popped up. One was a guru selling AI as a way to get rid of your staff. In the other, someone was lamenting all the people selling “ai employees” and wanted people’s opinions about it. One person responded “AI is better than the employee who quit two days before her launch and left everything a mess.”
Then, today, I was on a call and someone mentioned one of the billionaire tech-bros said that in no time flat, we won’t purchase anything from websites at all. AI will order everything we need. She was worried about her website building business. Rightly so…that’s a pretty intense comment.
As you know, I’m a huge believer in AI. Every day I use it and build it into my clients’ businesses.
But, it can never replace people, and I don’t think we want it to.
Humans need humans. We need each other, and it’s okay to need each other. Technology is a tool that can help us understand each other better and reach each other more.
AI is great at taking a pile of information and finding the through lines. That can take a person hours. What AI can’t do is the human part, like the way we listen and hear each other. AI can’t cry with you, and it can’t laugh with you or celebrate your win with a hug and a happy dance in the kitchen.
The first woman at the store had that human part down. She knew the regulars, and you could tell they liked seeing her. A self-checkout will never make anyone feel wanted like that.
So when someone calls AI an employee, I hear a promise it can’t keep. AI is a tool, and a really good one, but it still needs a person running it.
AI makes mistakes too
The owner whose employee quit before her launch has a point. That’s awful, and I’m sorry it happened to her.
It’s hard when someone leaves. Most of us have been on both sides of that. Disappointment shows up no matter who you work with, because your computer can die two days before a launch too. AI can make a big mistake in something it set up for you.
I see AI get things wrong every single day. Recently I was working on sales pages for a client. The offer had changed from free to $19.97, and we made that very clear. AI still got the price wrong on every page it made, and it slipped the old offer into some of the emails. (Hubby heard just a few expletives all the way downstairs that day!)
A person caught it. We need humans looking over AI’s work.
Whether you’re working with a person or with AI, the job is the same. Decide how you’ll handle it when something goes wrong, and write down how the work gets done so one mistake can’t sink your launch.
The task you keep running to do yourself
Back to the carpet cleaner. If that store hired me, I’d tell them two things.
First, keep enough people on the floor. The kind of help that makes customers feel known is worth paying for. It’s a big part of how easy you are to do business with.
Second, set up the work so it can be handed off. The person helping customers shouldn’t also be the one running to the back for the carpet cleaner. Give the manager on duty a couple of helpers who can grab things, and write it into how the shift runs so nobody has to figure it out in the middle of a rush.
That written-down version is what I call a playbook. It’s the steps for a job you do over and over, plus how you make the calls along the way. With one in place, anybody on shift can go grab the carpet cleaner.
I see owners do what the first woman did all the time. “I’m the only one who can write the sales page.” Swap in the emails or the client calls and it’s the same story, until there just aren’t enough hours in the day. That’s how you end up with a business that can’t run without you.
I’m not immune to this either. My email inbox is my carpet cleaner. (Hi, I’m Michelle, and I still clean out my own inbox.) I’ve been working on handing it off for a while (since Covid!), and what holds me back is trust. Will it answer the way I would?
So I’m starting small. Right now I’m looking at having AI pull out the spam and bot emails that still sneak past my filter, the one or two a day that look alike, and put them in a folder. Once I trust it with that, I can hand over something bigger.
It’s the same with a new team member. You start them on something small and build trust as you go. (If you’re not sure which small job to start with, I wrote about what to use AI for first.)
What AI frees up for you and your people
This is my favorite part. Most people are capable of so much more than the work they’re stuck doing. When AI takes some of the busywork, people get time for what they’re great at and what lights them up. That’s how they bring their gift to the world.
One of my clients runs a membership. The first 30 days decide whether a new member sticks around, and the information she needed to keep an eye on them lived in ten different places. So we wrote a playbook for it, and now AI runs it every week. It pulls everything into one snapshot of which new members are getting involved and which ones are going quiet. Along with that comes a suggested note for each person, like a congrats or a gentle nudge.
Then someone on her team sends those notes personally. It’s only been running about a week and a half, so we don’t have definitive numbers yet. But, people are already writing back and showing up more in the community.
The digging goes to AI, and the notes come from a person who knows these members.
The second woman at the store worked the same way. Instead of doing everything herself, she found the right person for the job, and I was out the door in five minutes.
Your first small step
If you read this and thought, “I’m the one running to get the carpet cleaner,” start small this week.
Pick one job you do over and over that eats your time but doesn’t need your heart.
Write down the steps and how you make the calls. That’s your first playbook.
Hand off the smallest, safest piece of it, to a person or to AI, and check the work for a week before you hand off more.
How to pick your first playbook
Not sure which job to start with? Rachel Woods at runonamp.com teaches four simple questions for this, and I use them on my own work and on client work.
Take one job you do over and over and ask yourself how often you do it, and how much it bugs you right now. Then ask whether you could teach a new assistant to do it in five to seven steps, and whether you’d know a good result when you saw one.
Four yeses means you’ve found your first playbook.
Mine was dinner. I wrote down every recipe our family eats and how I decide what goes on the menu, and now AI helps plan the week. I shared the whole story in What Should I Use AI For First in My Business? (Bonus: Noah now knows which night he’s cooking before the week even starts.)
If you’d like a sweeter example, my apple pie post walks through how a playbook works, one slice at a time.
Not sure which job to start with?
Grab “Pick Your First Playbook”: four questions to find the job worth building first.
And if you’d like help figuring out what to hand off first, book a time with me. That’s what I do.
Humans need humans. AI can help us get to each other.
So tell me, what’s your carpet cleaner? I’d love to hear in the comments.
Shell, Yes! Here’s to your success,
Michelle
-
“AI employee” is mostly a sales phrase. What you’re buying is an AI tool. It can handle tasks fast, like sorting information or drafting a first pass, but a person still has to check its work and take care of the people side of your business.
-
AI can answer simple, repeat questions and sort what comes in. When something matters to them, customers still want a person. Let AI handle the repeat stuff so your team has more time for the conversations that keep customers coming back.
-
A playbook is your know-how for one job, written down. It has the steps, plus how you make the calls along the way. Once it’s on paper, a team member or AI can do that job the same way every time.
-
Give AI the digging and sorting, and give people the listening and the relationships. Start with one small, low-risk task, check the results, and hand off more as your trust grows.