Which Unique Strengths Keep Your Business Strong in the Age of AI?

AI is being foisted upon us at every turn. Every piece of software has its own AI integration. Headlines and influencers keep talking about AI. Some love it, some loathe it. It just feels like it’s everywhere! 

I don’t feel the need to add to the din on the topic. Rather, I want to look at how AI impacts self-employed businesses. We micro-businesses have a unique constellation of strengths and weaknesses. This interfaces with AI differently than the average consumer, worker or business. 

Disclaimer 

There is a lot wrong with how AI is happening right now. It's negatively impacting the environment as well as local electrical and water resources. It’s committing large-scale plagiarism. It’s spreading lies in ways that humans can’t easily discern. All of these are real problems that we as a society need to grapple with. Where I’m coming from is that Pandora’s box is open. AI is out there. Whether we employ it or not, things are changing, and we need to navigate that change. Navigating the change is what I’m going to discuss today, the ethics of AI are for a different conversation. 

How Does AI Impact Self-employment? 

The strength of self-employment is our ability to pivot. There’s no board of directors or staff to get on board and navigate change. It’s just me, myself, and I. If I decide I want AI to write all my blog posts, then I just go do it. (For the record, I have not made this choice!) Larger organizations in our industry can’t adapt that fast. 

Our biggest weakness as self-employed businesses is that we’re so small. We can’t lay people off to keep the business going… we’re the only one! Our business is our livelihood, and often also our passion. It means so much to us. We make business decisions with our whole selves, not just focused on profit. While this is a weakness in the context of the capitalist death match of our economy, it is the far superior way of being. It’s a weakness, but not a problem. 

AI impacts self-employment on a number of levels. The work you do, i.e. the service you provide, might be changing due to AI. Or, the way you build your business and market might be changing. Regardless of those changes, the whole marketing ecosystem is undergoing a change. Let’s look at each of these levels individually. 

YOUR work.

Parallel to the worry that AI is making employed roles obsolete, you might be worrying about whether what you do will soon not be relevant. It’s foolhardy to think that all positions will remain once AI has taken hold. Technological revolutions are not new. The trend is that for every position made redundant by technology, a new position comes about. And that position is often to service that new technology.

Wondering “will my work still be here?” is a paralyzing question. Try asking yourself: What about my work can AI not do? Yes, AI is generative, but it’s not creative. Yes, AI can have a conversation with you, but it’s not a person. Yes, AI can automate things on a computer, but it can’t automate changing a light bulb or repairing a downspout. Think about your work and what your client gets out of it that AI is not able to do. Can you reframe your offering around those things? Or maybe that takes the fun out of your work, and you need to leverage your transferable skills in a different direction altogether!?

Your Role in Business 

People buy from people. You are and will remain a key feature of your business. Your connections and relationships are the things that keep your marketing inertia going. When you think about how AI could impact your business operations, it’s most likely to be in the realm of automations and workflows. Those repetitive tasks that you’ve been hesitant to hand off to a human executive assistant? Those are a good opportunity to leverage AI in your business, if you want to. If you don’t, no one will fault you. You get to decide how you run your business after all! 

Changes to the Marketing Ecosystem 

Regardless of the choices you make in how you do business and provide services, many of your customers might make use of AI. According to CNet: "agentic AI bots now generate 57.4% of all web requests globally." Consumers are changing the ways they find products and services. They're turning to AI assistants to navigate the search. AI assistant searches use the same search algorithms that already exist. They are built on the shoulders of the previous systems. Furthermore, AI continues to optimize towards the same goal as before. The goal is to provide the searcher with their prize with minimal-but-profitable annoyance. This means that my website - optimized merely for SEO, not agentic AI - surfaces in AI search, no problem. 

The methods of searching and finding are changing, but that is always true. As business owners, we need to keep our heads up, alert to the ever-changing world. It’s an opportunity for curiosity rather than panic. 

The Future of AI in Self-Employed Businesses

Self-employment is neither isolated from, nor more impacted by, AI. Self-employed people face distinct issues compared to other consumers, workers, and business owners. Above all, the biggest difference is that we get full control over what we do with AI and what we don’t. Rather than being fearful of change, grab the bull by the horns and make informed choices for your business.