Real small businesses are cutting payroll with AI. Here’s how… I’m always looking for stories of how owners are using AI in practical ways. When I read this WSJ piece, I had to share the core numbers. Mike Salvatore runs two cafes, two bars, and a bike shop in Chicago. He used to analyze cost of goods twice a year, spending hours on manual pricing calculations. Now he does it every three weeks with ChatGPT. He also feeds POS and QuickBooks data into Google’s NotebookLM. It creates a podcast about business performance that he shares with managers. The result? He employs one bar manager instead of two. Didn’t replace an event planner who left. “It’s essentially my CFO,” he said. Jeff Taxdahl needed to reorganize product info on his website. His hosting platform didn’t allow it. A young employee asked AI to write the code and tell them where to put it. It worked. “Five years ago, this would have meant hiring a developer,” Taxdahl said. Dustin Bruzenak turns one hour of podcast conversation into short videos and a blog post. “From one hour, we get an entire marketing campaign.” His firm has six employees. No need for a marketer. “I don’t foresee ever needing to hire another junior engineer again.” These aren’t time-savers. They’re permanent payroll reductions. Manville Chan runs a cooking school in San Francisco. He wanted AI to handle customer service emails. For months, he caught constant errors. AI told one customer the school does house calls. It doesn’t. “Once in a while people ask weird questions not coded in the system yet,” Chan said. “If they don’t know the answer, they will invent something.” Today, Chan only edits 10% of replies. 90% go out automatically. He spot-checks after. Even when AI was wrong 90% of the time, it beat the alternative. Hiring an admin for $40K plus benefits plus training time versus checking AI’s work. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce found 58% of small businesses now use generative AI. Up from 40% in 2024. The pattern is clear: $20/month is replacing $60K/year positions. Small businesses aren’t waiting for strategy teams. They’re just trying things until something works. Link to full WSJ article below.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ https://lnkd.in/erG_fWyK