Transform my business with AI
Where should I start with AI?
For when the problem is not one problem — and you want an honest answer about where AI actually helps.
The short answer
The useful question is not what AI can do. It is which of the things you already do every week could be done by something else — and then testing honestly whether it actually does them well.
The evidence says narrow beats broad: among firms that had adopted AI, most were using it in a handful of places, to assist existing work rather than replace it.
- Census: 23.2% of US businesses used AI in a business function in the two weeks to 23 August 2026.
- Of the firms that had adopted it, 57% used it in three or fewer business functions, and 66% only to assist existing work.
- The Federal Reserve notes adoption among the smallest firms runs stronger than size alone would predict.
- So the realistic goal is one or two things that genuinely work — not a transformation.
Where it actually comes from
Three honest starting points
Deliberately few. A transformation that starts everywhere finishes nowhere.
How can AI transform my business?
Don’t start with AI. Start with the work that’s slowing your business down.
- Find the repetitive work
- Identify what AI can actually handle
- Build around your existing systems
- Start where the payoff is clear
How do I get my team using AI?
Buying AI doesn’t change how your team works. Putting it into the work does.
- Find useful opportunities
- Build around real tasks
- Give people practical workflows
- Measure what actually improves
How do I get my business to show up in ChatGPT?
People now ask an assistant for a recommendation instead of searching. Whether you come up at all depends on what these systems can understand about you.
- See how assistants describe you now
- Fix what they get wrong or miss
- Skip the tactics that do nothing
- Be ready when they can buy for the customer
Who does this
What SidRatnam.com does about AI
SidRatnam.com maps where a specific business actually spends its week, tests which of that work AI genuinely handles well, builds the ones that pass into real workflows using the business’s own material, and hands them to a named owner inside the business. Where AI does not help, we say so.
What that includes: a review of the repetitive work in your week, honest testing of each candidate task, working sessions on your real material, and a written record your team keeps using.
What it contributes to: a small number of tasks that genuinely change, and stay changed.
Live today
Evidence
What the research actually says
Every figure carries its source, date, the population it was measured across, and whether it is an observation or a projection.
In the two weeks to 23 August 2026, 23.2% of US businesses reported using AI in a business function. Roughly two-thirds said they did not.
estimated US Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey, cycle 202618
published 10 September 2026 · nationally representative sample of US businesses; roughly 200,000 surveyed per cycle · reference period 10–23 August 2026
Census rewrote this question in November 2025, which shifted the measured level upward. Figures before and after that change are not comparable, so no trend is drawn from them here.
Among firms that had adopted AI, 57% used it in three or fewer business functions, and 66% used it solely to augment existing tasks rather than replace them.
estimated US Census Bureau, CES Working Paper 26-25, “The Microstructure of AI Diffusion”
April 2026 · more than 117,000 distinct US firms · reference period November 2025 – January 2026
Three credible surveys of the same economy put AI adoption at roughly 18%, 41% and 78%. The Federal Reserve attributes the spread to sampling, unit of analysis, question framing and what counts as real usage — and notes that “adoption among the smallest firms is stronger than would be expected based on size alone”.
observed Federal Reserve, FEDS Notes, “Monitoring AI Adoption in the US Economy”
3 April 2026 · comparison of the Business Trends and Outlook Survey, the Real-Time Population Survey and the Atlanta Fed Survey of Business Uncertainty · published April 2026
30% of desk workers had received no AI training at all and 61% had spent under five hours learning to use it. 45% did not have explicit permission to use AI at work, and 48% would be uncomfortable telling their manager they had used it.
estimated Slack Workforce Lab, Workforce Index
12 November 2024 · 17,372 desk workers across 15 countries, surveyed independently of Slack customers · fieldwork 2–30 August 2024
The reasons people gave were social, not procedural: feeling that using AI is cheating (47%), fear of seeming less competent (46%) or lazy (46%). Company policy was the least-cited reason, at 21%.
The other four
Most businesses arrive with one of these
Start with your numbers
The free analysis looks at your actual business and comes back with a short list of opportunities ranked by what they would genuinely be worth to you.