Entrepreneur Melinda Emerson, also known as SmallBizLady, explains how thoughtful adoption of AI and digital systems can keep small businesses competitive.
What do you see as the biggest challenge facing small business owners today?
AI is a once-in-a-generation juggernaut that is constantly transforming how business is conducted globally. It’s phenomenal for productivity, strategy, competitive analysis, and planning. However, for most small firms, the challenge isn’t “What prompt should I use?” It’s “How do I upskill a team that already wears five hats without dropping the business we have today?” The capability gap is real: Owners feel they must simultaneously swap out their tech stack, learn new tools, rewrite processes, and reimagine offers while keeping the lights on.
AI will eliminate tasks faster than it eliminates entire jobs or industries, and it will reward the businesses that redesign workflows around it, not just the ones that dabble. The World Economic Forum estimates that by 2030, macrotrends led by technology will create ~170 million jobs and displace ~92 million, for a net gain of ~78 million. Translation: Roles will shift across industries; very few industries “disappear,” but many job descriptions will. Clerical, marketing, and many high-skilled jobs are projected to shrink the fastest, while data, security, AI, software, and green transition roles are expected to rise. Companies that retrain, rather than retreat, will win. Small business owners have a window to act deliberately to upgrade processes, build AI-assisted SOPs, and reskill teams before disruption compounds. Fear is not a strategy; a learning plan is.
Small business owners should treat AI like electricity. Integrate it into every aspect of their business with intention, safety, and established standards. That’s how you turn existential dread into a durable advantage.
What tools, technologies, or resources are most critical to start, grow, and sustain a business?
I’m ruthless about three pillars: AI, CRM, and email, because together they form a compounding sales engine in any small business. Email is your highest-control, highest-ROI nurture channel, CRM is your single source of true customer data, and AI accelerates the entire loop.
Use AI to compress research, draft briefs, pattern-match customer insights, and generate first drafts, not final decisions. Prioritize tools with AI seamlessly integrated. According to Salesforce, 91% of SMBs using AI say it boosts revenue, but only when it’s integrated into workflows. Start with three to five repeatable use cases (e.g., proposal drafting, inbox triage, ad-copy testing, call summaries, and SOP first drafts) and measure time saved per task.
A CRM is where sales pipeline discipline lives: leads, deals, activities, and customer health. It should house your segmentation rules, scoring, automations, and renewal logic. Tie CRM data to decisions and make sure you and the entire team know how to use the software.
Social is rented land; email is owned. Done right, it’s still the highest-ROI channel in the online selling universe. Most companies see $10–$36 back for every $1 spent on email. Make it personal, timely, and useful. Use onboarding sequences, win-back campaigns, replenishment reminders, and value-first newsletters.
You don’t need 50 tools; you need five that talk to each other and the discipline to use them daily. Small businesses don’t fail from a lack of effort; they fail from a lack of evolution. AI, CRM, and email aren’t just “tools;” they are how you evolve on purpose. The future isn’t something that happens to you; it’s something you build.
Why is it essential for small businesses to embrace digital marketing and online systems?
Digital marketing is not a channel; it’s the operating system of customer trust. The modern buyer discovers on social, validates on Google, decides via email, and purchases on mobile. If your systems can’t greet, guide, and follow up at every step, you’re invisible where decisions get made. Attention is fragmented. You need consistent, automated follow-up, or you lose to whoever replies fastest. Reviews, case studies, and useful content travel farther online than any brochure. Your website, email, and CRM should collaborate to capture data so that you can personalize offers and prove outcomes. Leverage digital systems to test new offers, target audiences, and partnerships quickly.
My rule is that every digital action should do double duty — educate the market and enrich your data. If your posts, pages, and emails don’t feed the CRM, you’re marketing for your competitors.
What advice would you give to entrepreneurs whose margins are being squeezed by tariffs?
Tariffs are squeezing smaller suppliers, who must be strategic in their approach. When inputs get pricier, the winners don’t just negotiate harder; they redesign their unit economics and their markets.
Here’s a playbook I use with clients:
- Re-segment and re-price. Stop averaging pain across all customers. Segment by cost-to-serve and price elasticity. Create a value-shielded tier (i.e., white-glove, guaranteed service level agreements) and a cost-optimized tier (i.e., longer lead times, batch shipping). Pass-through increases where your differentiation is real (i.e., speed, compliance, design IP).
- Nearshore or dual source. Even a 20–30% volume share with a regional supplier can give you leverage. Treat it like an insurance premium against supply-chain surprises.
- Product mix and margin math. Push bundles and attach services (e.g., installation, training, maintenance) that aren’t tariffed in the same way as your physical products. Services turn tariff spikes into opportunities for cross-selling.
- Highlight the value. Customers accept price moves when they see operational wins: fewer stockouts, improved support, and guaranteed quality. Don’t apologize for sustainable margins; explain the protection the customer receives.
Margins tighten; strategy shouldn’t. Tariffs expose whether you’ve built a resilient cost structure and a flexible go-to-market. If not, this is your signal to build one.
How can small business owners turn setbacks into opportunities for long-term success?
Setbacks are tuition you didn’t plan to pay. The trick is to extract the lesson and adapt quickly.
- Figure out what went wrong. “The campaign didn’t work” isn’t a diagnosis. It’s an opportunity to figure out why and do better next time. Was it the segment, the offer, the channel, or the timing? Run a 60-minute post-mortem on any major initiatives. Gather facts, assign a single root cause, and capture what we should have done better to make this succeed. Turn that into a new SOP within 48 hours.
- Turn delays into R&D. If a deal stalls, use that time to build an asset, such as a lead magnet, a case study, a calculator, or a checklist. Every “no” should produce an artifact that increases the odds of your next “yes.”
- Reframe the story. Customers buy confidence. If you can say, “We changed our process or pricing because we listened,” you convert vulnerability into trust and trust into lifetime customer value.
- Measure recovery speed, not just revenue. Time-to-iteration is a KPI. Track how fast your team converts friction into better systems. Build a culture where experiments are inexpensive, decisions are well-documented, and improvements are widely shared and implemented. That’s how setbacks become assets.
