Guardian Owl Digital Puts People First in Small-Business AI Adoption

I’m the founder and CEO of a full-service digital marketing firm, Guardian Owl Digital, in Louisville, Kentucky. Over the past 12 years, my team and I have developed online marketing strategies for hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses, helping them build trusted brands, grow, and succeed. 

Over the past year, I’ve spoken with scores of business leaders about incorporating AI into their marketing operations. What I’ve learned is that there’s a big gap between AI’s capabilities and many people’s readiness to start leveraging those capabilities. It’s like AI is a seed with huge growth potential — but the soil is dry, so the seed is struggling to take root. 

When we talk about businesses’ adoption of AI tools, we have to remember that businesses are run by people: It’s people who have to adopt the tools, and who have to be ready to embrace the change and uncertainty that comes with that adoption.  

Right now, I’m seeing three key hurdles to people’s AI adoption. First, many business leaders are already struggling with a range of change-related challenges. A lot of businesses are still finding their balance after adapting to COVID, and then the “new normal” that followed. On top of that, they’re dealing with inflation, rapid shifts in technology, and unpredictable trade policies and related costs. Many business leaders feel like they’re barely keeping up with fast-paced changes all around them. So when you come in and talk to them about using new AI-powered tools to revolutionize business processes and employees’ behavior, they’re overwhelmed.

Second, many business leaders feel uncertain about the current business climate; there’s a lot of unease about economic fundamentals like costs and consumer sentiment. Uncertainty causes business leaders to hold off on making big changes and investments, and that’s doubly true when the changes and investments are themselves new and unknown.

Finally, and most importantly, people struggle with change. Think how difficult it is to get people to change their daily habits and behaviors. Even if a business’s leaders are ready to try out new AI tools, their teams and employees may not be. If a business has 100 employees and only the top 5 or 10 are ready to really embrace AI-driven changes, those changes won’t take root. 

Small businesses are vital to local communities and the broader economy. AI-powered technologies have the potential to supercharge small businesses, helping them boost efficiency, compete with bigger players, and grow. Clearly, policymakers should help small businesses adopt AI tools. To do that, they need to start asking human-focused questions: How can we prepare people for the changes that are coming? How can we incentivize people to start using AI tools? Where are there opportunities to create change in America’s small businesses, in this age of transformation?  

AI is new and different, but people are the same as they’ve always been. Policymakers’ job is to help bridge that gap so small businesses, and all of us, can leverage AI’s astonishing potential.