Running a small business means putting on a lot of hats. I’m sure many of you reading this know exactly what I mean.
Besides doing the actual work to come up with a finished product for your clients, you have plenty of other jobs to do. Some you probably never thought about before.
Marketing. Compliance. Web design. Accounting…it all adds up. And at some point, you’re probably begging for help.
But that help can come with a cost. At least in the traditional sense.
Time is Money
After a while, some of these jobs just take too much time away from what you need to do. Which is why I finally hired a bookkeeper.
The truth is I’m no QuickBooks expert. Yet it’s almost impossible to get away from using it. I need to make sure that I account for all sources of income. All expenses line up the right way. And that the balance sheet is correct.
So when I found an issue with the books recently, I almost pulled my hair out trying to figure out how to fix things. QuickBooks isn’t exactly user-friendly unless you've spent countless hours training on how to use it.
The problem was that the system wasn’t reconciling my transactions. Income wasn’t lining up with bank deposits. It counted some things twice. And that all affected the balance sheet because it put figures in categories I knew weren’t right.
So I hired a bookkeeper.
Except this was no ordinary bookkeeper. I bit the bullet and handed things over to an AI agent.
That’s right, I hired an AI agent to set things straight.
Right away, I gave it access to the books. I prompted it to find the gaps. And send me a list of everything that needed fixing.
It took just minutes for it to come back with an answer.
Initially, it showed me how to fix things myself. But again, it was like pulling teeth. So I asked it to take over.
Right away, the system asked me to upload specific documents it needed to fix each issue step-by-step.
I gave it a document. It ran an assessment. Went back into QuickBooks. Showed me what it did. Then repeated the same steps for the next problem.
It fixed each issue one-by-one…without me ever touching QuickBooks.
Over the course of about half a day, my AI bookkeeper fixed every problem. And it was accurate. I know because I checked to make sure things were in balance.
Opportunity Cost
Now, before I went down this path, I actually looked into hiring an actual bookkeeper to manage my books for me.
If I handed things over to a CPA with expertise in this sort of thing, it would have cost about $3,000 just to bring things up to speed. Then ongoing monthly fees after that to settle the books each month.
What did it cost me with AI? About $50 in credits.
So now I have a full-time bookkeeper set to automatically reconcile the books every month. All for less than the price of a nice steak dinner. (And for all you CPAs out there. Don’t worry. I’m not firing mine. Far from it. There’s no chance I’m handing over the heavy lifting of tax returns or other heavy work to my new “bookkeeper”.)
Before trying this, AI was mainly just another way for me to source information far faster than a search engine. I could easily search a topic and have a ton of source material at my fingertips. I could double-check those sources against what the system summarized.
This experiment opened my eyes even more as to what AI can actually do. It isn’t just a better way to search for things. It’s an entire team that can free me up to do far more than I thought I could.
I know many small business owners are already doing the same.
That doesn’t mean I’m working less. It just makes me more efficient and far more productive. And I think that’s what’s missing from the AI conversation.
The Future
Now, I should say that I don’t see AI replacing jobs in the way that some doomsayers are thinking. Much in the same way that they said automation would replace factory workers.
Except, automation didn’t do that. Sure, it made things more efficient, but it only goes so far without human input.
Instead, I see AI as a complement to how we do our jobs. Or the ability to do mundane tasks for far less and far faster than before.
Today, I have “assistants” set up to give me reports on all sorts of things. Things like sales and marketing. Optimizing my operation and more.
It’s about making things more efficient and having a better experience overall. Not making more work for myself that takes time away that I can spend with the kids.
At this point, I don’t believe AI is a doomsday tech. It’s a way to help take some of the burden of everyday tasks off your plate. (It even helped me diagnose and fix a problem with my leaf blower. I took it apart and put it all back together. But it helped guide the process at each step.)
And if you haven’t yet, try it out for yourself. There are plenty of different AI companies to try out. Like Perplexity, Grok, Gemini, and Muse, just to name a few.
At the end of the day, I believe we’re at an inflection point in technological history. Either we accept it and find ways to use it to advance our work and lives. Or we don’t and go the way of the buggy-whip maker.
I know which one I choose. And I’m excited about what that eventually means for both my business and my portfolio.
Regards,
Editor, Strategic Trader
