The Web Talk Show

Small Business AI: Where to Start If You're Not a Tech Person

The Web Talk Show

Show Notes

Small business AI can be hard to figure out if you're not a tech person. In this solo episode, Armando J. Perez-Carreno explains agentic AI in plain words and shows where AI agents can help with invoices, inventory, reports, and daily operations. In this episode: Agentic AI can work through several steps in one turn, while a regular chatbot answers a single prompt and stops. Automation flows built in tools like Zapier or Make.com work well, but someone has to build each one and fix it when something changes. An AI agent with the right skills can take a plain request like "get all the invoices from this month and prepare a report" and work out the steps on its own. If your inventory lives in different systems across more than one warehouse, you can give an agent read-only access so it pulls the data and builds reports without someone doing it by hand. Getting good results depends on explaining what you need clearly, so use the plan feature and ask the AI to interview you until the scope is clear. A good place to start is any repetitive task you do by hand, like processing invoices or updating spreadsheets. Once it works, ask the AI to turn it into a skill you can reuse and share with your team. Chapters 00:00 What agentic AI means 03:32 Fixed automation flows and their limits 05:05 Giving an AI agent skills 07:52 Sending tasks from your phone 10:56 Automating reports and inventory 15:15 Guardrails that keep agents safe 18:17 A no-code scraper example 20:57 Explaining what you need clearly 26:04 Where your small business should start 34:21 Keeping your own voice with AI Episode page: https://webtalk.show/episodes/068-small-business-ai-where-to-start-if-youre-not-a-tech-person/ Hosted by Armando J. Perez-Carreno. Learn more at https://perezcarreno.com

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