How to Grow Your Business with AI
We’re on a mission to help founders develop digital skills so that their businesses can thrive! With the help of our partners at BT, we’ve interviewed real-life business owners and mentors so that you can learn from people who’ve been in your shoes and can show you the way forward.
In this blog, we’re exploring how to grow your business with AI, without getting bogged down in the technical jargon. We know that for many founders, especially in traditional industries, AI can feel like a “huge technical leap” that leaves you feeling a bit frozen.
But you don’t have to be a tech expert to see results. In this blog, we hear from Cath, founder of CDS Printer Solutions, who shares how she moved past the initial “bombshell” of AI to boost her sales by 20% and even grow her team!
You can watch the full video interview here.
Finding excitement with AI
Before embracing AI, Cath describes her printer repair business as “plodding along.” They weren’t growing; they were standing still. When a mentor first asked Cath why she wasn’t using AI for business growth, she admitted she felt intimidated.
“It was a bit of a bombshell, really,” Cath says. “We’re an old-fashioned repair company. I thought, ‘We don’t do that.'”
But by shifting her mindset, Cath didn’t just find a new tool—she found a “jumping-off point” that made the business feel exciting again. Here’s how you can dive into AI just like Cath did!
Your guide to mastering AI
1. Treat AI as your “Digital Teammate”
Running a small business can be lonely. You don’t always have someone sitting across from you to help with a difficult email or bust a creative block. AI fills that gap, helping you tackle the “wordy stuff” that usually takes up way too much of your brainpower.
How to use your new “teammate”:
- Unblock your marketing Use AI to draft social media posts or blogs that you’ve been putting off.
- Tidy up your writing: Save hours of self-correcting by having AI write proposals and emails for you.
- Brainstorming: Ask questions and request feedback to help you develop and refine ideas.
Does it actually work? Yes! Cath used AI to get “much louder” on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Even though she didn’t think a printer repair business belonged on Instagram, the results were “mind-blowing”—sales increased by 15% to 20% in just six months.
➡️ Take Action
- Try this today: Ask your AI to create a social media post for you, optimised for each of the platforms that you use (we like Claude or Gemini for this!).
- Watch this Masterclass on how to use AI wisely in your marketing copy
2. Focus on gaps not fear
There’s a big myth that AI is only here to take jobs. But for small businesses, it’s often the exact opposite! When you move away from that fear and focus on the gaps AI can help you fill, that’s when the growth happens.
So how do you find your gaps? For Cath, she sat down and listed out all the repetitive tasks she was doing each day. She also reflected on the things she wasn’t doing. In Cath’s case, this was marketing, which was nonexistent at the time.
Cath used AI to fill her marketing gap. Using it to generate consistent content at scale across multiple social media platforms. This presence on social media steadily built Cath’s online following. And after just a few months, she was getting new leads and contracts from social media! Rather than replacing anyone on her team, AI plugged a gap that unlocked more sales. And with more sales, came the need for Cath to hire two new team members for their warehouse!
Ask yourself, what growth could you see if you filled some of the gaps in your business with AI?
➡️ Take Action:
- As Cath recommends, make a list of all the repetitive tasks you do each week. Tasks that are taking up your time unnecessarily are “gaps” that AI can easily fill! Once you’ve got your list, see which of these gaps AI could fill for you. You’ll be amazed how many hours you can reclaim by outsourcing these tasks to your AI!
3. Get great at prompting
The biggest mistake people make is being too vague when prompting their AI tool. If you just say “write me an email,” you’re not going to get great results.
And what we don’t want to do is put out content that’s clearly written by AI. We want to ensure that the outputs you’re getting look and sound like your business.
To get the best out of your AI, follow this framework when prompting:
- What: What exactly are you trying to create?
- Why: What’s the goal of this content?
- Tone: How do you want the content to sound? Professional? Friendly?
- Context: Give it the background info it needs to be accurate.
➡️ Take Action: Try out these simple AI prompts to get started with your AI!
The AI Toolkit: Tools to Try Today
There are so many AI tools out there, but don’t worry! You don’t need to learn them all. Experiment and see which tools you like, and then stick with what works for you 😊
Here are some of Digital Boost’s favourite AI tools:
- ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude: Great for drafting emails, blogs, and social posts.
- Perplexity: Fantastic for research and finding real-time information.
- NotebookLM: A brilliant tool for organising your business notes and ideas, and understanding a large amount of information
- Otter.AI or Fireflies.AI: Amazing for taking meeting notes so you don’t have to!
- Intercom or Tidio: Great starting points for Chatbots and customer support
- Klaviyo and HubSpot: Email marketing tools that allow you to build automations and connect with your customers in real-time
- Notion or ClickUp: Two great project management tools that are integrating AI to help you work smarter, not harder, across all your projects
- Zapier: The best in class for connecting all your tools and apps and ensuring they’re all “talking” to each other
The Bottom Line
So there you have it! Cath’s shown us how to grow your business with AI. As you can see, it’s all about taking small steps into the world of AI and beginning to gain confidence and momentum as you go.
You don’t need to be a tech genius; you just need to start!
Need support with anything that we’ve covered in this blog? Join our community and start accessing free mentoring to continue learning with us!
Meet the Founder
Cath (pictured right) runs CDS Printer Solutions, a printer repair and sales company in Staffordshire. After a mentor challenged her to start using AI, she went from being “frozen” by marketing to seeing record-breaking growth and hiring new staff.
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