The 2 Highest Impact Tools Small Businesses can Use to Simplify Success with AI

Let’s dive into the real talk about the best AI tools for small businesses and how to make them work for you.

Why AI Tools Will Make a Difference for Businesses

A lot of the AI talk on the internet is abstract—people getting excited about new possibilities, worried about AI armageddon, and hypothesizing about the future. But for small business owners, none of that is helpful; it just contributes to the overwhelm. For you, AI success is all about practical tools, using it to get results, and getting stuff done more efficiently.

Underneath the layers of impractical information is a solid goldmine of tools that will make a real difference to your business processes today; here are the two AI tools that we as a small business ourselves have found to be the maximum impact minimum headache choices.

More than 90% of small business owners who use AI say the technology has made their businesses more successful.

1: ChatGPT, Your Everything Assistant

• Ease of set-up and integration: 10/10
• Efficiency & usefulness: 9/10
• Range of application: -Business-wide
• Cost: Free, or premium for $20 per month (it’s worth it!)

ChatGPT is the most popular AI tool in the world today, and for good reason. Signing up takes about 1 minute, the free version works wonders, and you’ll be able to use it in virtually every department. Acting as an assistant, you can ask ChatGPT absolutely anything, and chances are, it’ll do it well enough to slash your work time into half.At Oak Theory, we use ChatGPT mostly to ensure clear communication, translating messages between our multilingual team. Our best ChatGPT tip? Create a series of robust prompts that’ll save you time when giving it instructions.

AI is proven to boost productivity by up to 40%.

2: Midjourney, Your Bottomless Source of Inspiration

• Ease of set-up and integration:10/10
• Efficiency & usefulness: 7.5/10
• Range of application: -Creative departments & marketing
• Cost: Subscriptions starting from $10 per month.

Midjourney is a generative AI tool that transforms text prompts into visual art, but it doesn’t stop there. With tools like image remix (transforming pre-existing visual elements), inpainting (removing elements altogether), expand (to widen any image), and background replace, you can save your design team a lot of time with this AI tool.

At Oak Theory, we don’t necessarily use Midjourney to get our final designs (it’s difficult to get a perfectly on-brand, high resolution product), but we find it amazing for getting inspiration. Our best tip for Midjourney is to go wide—generate some crazy ideas, and it might just light up a previously unseen creative route.

Growing into AI Maturity as a Small Business

In a landscape where 60% of small businesses say they are working more efficiently since using AI*, you can’t really afford to lag behind. Small businesses that have successfully integrated AI aren’t just keeping up; they’re using it intelligently to gain a competitive edge.

This is not about racing to integrate every AI tool; it’s about identifying the right ones that align with your business goals and gradually expanding your AI toolkit in a sustainable way that makes sense for your team. If you’d like to dive deeper into what the best AI tools for small businesses are right now, then consider taking 10 minutes to explore our easy-to-read whitepaper here.