The Small Business AI Starter Kit
The five workflows to hand to AI first, the prompts to run them, and the review step that keeps the output yours.
Published Aug 30, 2026
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You will finish this with one paid AI account, five prompts you can paste today, and a review habit that stops you from publishing something that sounds like nobody. Expect two hours to set up, thirty days to know whether it's worth the money, and a clear answer on which parts of your business to keep away from it entirely.
1. Buy one account and stop shopping
Pick one general-purpose assistant. Pay for the individual plan. Do not buy the AI add-on for your CRM, your bookkeeping tool, and your email at the same time — you will spend more and learn less.
The paid tier matters. Free tiers usually route you to a weaker model with tighter limits, which is the fastest way to conclude "this doesn't work" for the wrong reason. Prices change often and vary by country and currency; check the provider's own pricing page rather than a comparison article.
That is where the free part ends.
The rest walks the whole thing through, step by step — including the parts people get wrong and what to do when the normal route fails.