AI, Access, and the Future of Small Business

By Kekeletso Nkele, small.news Assistant

Q: What is the answer, in your opinion, to doing an intervention so that AI really could be something that is helpful in solving injustice as opposed to a perpetuator of it?

A: So I think the scary thing, Carissa, is there’s never enough of us in the rooms anyway. Women of color, we’re always underrepresented in the big rooms where decisions are being made. And I think AI can be a great equalizer. It can also widen massive gaps.

So if there’s already a gap, you’re going to automate that gap. The other thing that’s happening is called shadow AI, where I’m using my phone, and I’m using it at home, but I don’t know if I’m safe to use it at work. Because leaders aren’t really saying, “Hey, we have AI, and this is what it means for you.”

We’re not going to replace you. You’re not going to look less than because you’re using it, but am I safe to use it? Am I not safe to use it?

Q: Do you think that one of the tools is better than the others?

A:
Everybody uses ChatGPT because it started in 2015, feeding data from the internet. It’s got a bunch of information.

That doesn’t mean it’s accurate or fair, or that it doesn’t hallucinate. Google is the least biased. I think Google Gemini is just using data from the internet, analyzing that data, and giving you outputs. What are you trying to understand? You can use deep research mode, and it will just scrape all of these things from the internet because Google understands the behavior of sites we trust versus those we don’t.

Claude has gotten really good. And every time a model comes out, it’s just new data, more information, more things. I’ve probably spent years training Chat on me. In two hours, Claude was up to speed on me.

Q: Based on your experience, what do we need to do to get the right people at the table in these conversations about AI, about all these modernizations happening?

A: If I look at the people who are at this table, does it look like the fabric of America? No. It can’t be just something that we’re passionate about and talk about because we’re not in the room.

So the people who are actually in the room have to hold up a mirror to themselves, and it’s not comfortable or fun, but it has to be done because we can’t invite ourselves into the room. And sometimes we’re not in those circles of influence with the people that are at the table. So I think this is something that has to be actioned by predominantly white men.

Q: What’s been your journey building your business?

A: I struggled. No one in my family had entrepreneurial experience. So there were many struggles and so much conditioning I brought from the world of work, where my time was valued in 60-minute increments. So I was like, ” Oh my gosh, if I charge $150, that’s great. It’s not the time.

It’s the value that I can deliver to you in that amount of time. That was a huge shift. The fact that I brought the same check-to-check behavior I saw from my mother, which I did as an adult, except now it was project-to-project, like this feast-and-famine. It’s exhausting. I went into business with this dream of like, I’m going to be at every kid’s soccer game, and I’m going to travel the world. And I missed more when I started my business, because things shifted and things changed.

So when I joined silv=r™, and part of the onboarding process is going through your time budget, and you prioritize, you make us prioritize, like we pay ourselves.​ There’s nothing more magical about your time than my time, but how we spend that time. I built a life to support my business, not a business to support my life.

Q: What do you think you’ve had to shift the most to get your mindset into the place where you feel like you can accomplish what you want to?

A: I think one challenge that a lot of us have, especially multi-passionate people who have brilliant ideas and are visionaries, is focusing on things. Because a lot of the emphasis that I’ve learned in the community that you’ve built is the fact that what is your time being spent on? What is your energy being spent on?

There are these patterns that you don’t even recognize you have that are sabotaging your potential. So just looking at that, and it’s like self-awareness isn’t comfortable. And seeing what you’re not doing well isn’t comfortable.

Q: Why are you succeeding?

A: So I think the program is different. I’ve been in mastermind rooms and paid a lot of money to be there, only to feel like I wasn’t the smartest person in the room. But I think this has always been different from day one, when you forced me to look at my time budget and how much time I was spending. There were weeks when I spent zero time with my family, other than making sure they were fed and bathed, alive.

But I reprioritize so many things. So I think what I have seen the benefit of, and the coach that I have, which I love, is Victor, he’s like, what are you doing for you? He knows when I look tired; he’ll tell me, “Are you resting?”

Cause he can tell on my face. I’m like, Oh my God. So I think part of it is accountability to my coaches and the team at silv=r™. And I also like to pause and reflect as part of my Sunday ritual. It, it, it grounds me in what I did well? What did I not do well?​​

Q: What are you most worried about for small businesses?

A: I think on a bigger scale, there are so many brilliant people who go out of business because they lose hope, and they’re undercapitalized. Yeah. And there’s so much noise if you are going into business with social media, with ads, with the internet, that it’s so easy to get distracted and to stay true to a goal, even if you set a goal for 90 days. Let me try to go deep in this one place for 90 days.

And I think the risk is that if we don’t have revenue, we can’t sustain. And so many people are afraid of sales. 

Q: What are you most excited about?

A: What’s happening with AI is our generation’s version of an industrial revolution. I also think that AI does not have bias. So it doesn’t matter whether you finished high school or have six advanced degrees; anyone can learn it.

And there’s so much opportunity to start businesses; the barrier to starting a business is like down here now. You can use AI to fill in so many gaps and help you produce so much more than when we started, when we had to do everything, figure out our own website, and learn what social media is now. And what are all these things? All of that stuff is gone.

So I feel like there’s an incredible opportunity right now: AI can be an incredible equalizer for anyone who’s willing to learn. And you can do that on your own. Yes.

Q: If you could wave a Magic Silver Wand, and you could do one thing right now for every small business in the world, what would you use your wand for?

A: I would give them money. I would make sure they have whatever they need to stabilize and build a sustainable business, whether that is money to hire resources, build tech, or do whatever it takes. And I’m sure that’s not the mature answer.

Q: How does everyone support you?

A: Right now, I am shifting my focus to getting my product to market, which is a very small market. And we’re probably going to look at some catalytic capital with strategic investors. So we’re going after family offices,

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