Your Competitors’ Secret Weapon
AI as Infrastructure
The first time I saw AI reshape a Main Street business, it wasn’t in a tech incubator or a venture-backed startup. It was in the back office of a Main Street company in Littleton. The owner had been drowning in invoicing errors and missed follow-ups. One morning, he told me, “I finally got tired of losing money the stupid way.” He showed me how he used a basic AI workflow to categorize transactions, summarize job notes, and automatically draft customer updates. Within two months, his backlog disappeared, cash flow stabilized, and he closed more repeat business than he had in the entire previous quarter.
My takeaway: he wasn’t trying to “innovate.” He was trying to survive.
And he’s not alone.
According to a 2025 survey from Intuit QuickBooks, 68% of small businesses report using AI regularly…and among those, 74% say it has boosted their productivity over the past year. These firms aren’t building robots or rewriting their tech stacks. They are using AI for research, email campaigns, image creation, content development, scheduling, and financial tasks…the unglamorous, everyday work that makes or breaks a local business.
Yet when I talk to owners preparing for an exit or trying to grow into the middle market, I hear the same hesitation:
“I know I should be doing more with AI… but where do I start?”
This is the turning point that too many underestimate.
The market has quietly shifted. AI is no longer a differentiator. It is the new baseline infrastructure of competitiveness. The longer an owner waits, the more that gap compounds.
That’s where the real pain begins.
While some owners dabble with ChatGPT once a week “to see what it can do,” their competitors are redesigning workflows, cutting administrative hours, accelerating customer response times, improving margins, and reinvesting freed-up cash into wages, benefits, marketing, and expansion.
AI is quickly becoming the only lever that gives Main Street both speed and scale without adding headcount.
I’ve watched a single-location salon increase pre-booked appointments simply by using AI to optimize their SMS cadence. I’ve seen a specialty contractor reclaim 12 hours a week by automating job summaries and proposal drafts. A local retailer near me used AI-supported multi-channel marketing to increase revenue during what should have been a seasonal slump… and all she changed was her weekly workflow.
These aren’t tech companies. These are businesses your neighbors run.
The brutal truth:
When AI adoption reaches critical mass in an industry, late adopters rarely catch up. They lose margin first, then customers, then talent, then negotiating leverage when they eventually decide to sell.
But here’s the good news: you don’t need a “digital transformation.”
You don’t need a CTO.
You don’t need a six-figure software budget.
What you need is to treat AI like a small capital project.
Start with two or three high-leverage use cases that free real hours and improve real outcomes. For most Main Street operators, the best early wins tend to be weekly content production, AI-assisted bookkeeping categorization, and a simple FAQ chatbot on the website. These are practical, boring, high-ROI moves. They reclaim time, reduce errors, and improve the customer experience in ways a buyer can see.
Set a monthly budget that feels trivial. Your spend doesn’t need to exceed what you’d pay a part-time administrative assistant for three hours of work. Assign ownership to one person who documents processes as they go. By the end of a quarter, you’ll have measurable gains: fewer hours on back-office tasks, faster response times, more consistent marketing, and clearer financials.
And then comes the strategic lift. The moment you have clean processes, you can layer more powerful plays: churn prediction, dynamic pricing, customer segmentation, inventory forecasting. These are the tools that quietly separate companies that plateau from companies that accelerate.
When buyers look at businesses in 2025 and beyond, they aren’t asking “Do you use AI?” They’re asking “How mature are your systems?” A business that can document reclaimed hours, improved margins, or automated workflows is a business that commands higher multiples and attracts better buyers.
This is the real story: AI is no longer about innovation… it is about transferable value.
The owners who adopt now will have a meaningfully different future than those who wait. The delta between “AI-enabled” and “AI-resistant” businesses is widening. Not gradually but exponentially.
So the question isn’t whether AI belongs in your business. It’s whether you want your competitor to be the one who figures it out first.
David Hermann, CEO of hermanngroup and M&A Advisor/Broker at Sunbelt Business Brokers of Colorado
David Hermann is a transformative advisor and strategist who turns complex business challenges into extraordinary successes. Known for driving over $500 million in documented financial improvements for clients, David partners with C-suite leaders to unlock their full potential. With 60+ speaking engagements, numerous publications, and a spot in the top 1% of Consulting Voices and top 1% of the Social Selling Index on LinkedIn, he’s passionate about making strategy, change leadership, and operations insightful and accessible.