Today on the blog I want to talk about building an AI agent for your small business. I won’t drown you in research. What I will share are some of the lessons I’ve learned since building my first AI agent – the stuff  that all small business owners actually need to watch for.

Not because AI’s coming to steal our clients or shrink our paychecks.

Well, okay – that could happen but only if we’re stubborn or slow to adapt.

However facts are facts and  this is one of them: there’s nobody better equipped to harness AI than those belonging to the entrepreneurial community.

We’re the ones who always had to pivot on a dime, read all the rooms, scan the horizon and reinvent ourselves a dozen times before breakfast.

That makes us agile by force, nature or nurture.

By definition it makes us more than ready to read, learn and implement AI agents in our small business workflows.

That’s what I did, not just for me but for the female founders I serve. Here’s the backstory.

Meet Amy, My AI Agent 

Amy, my first AI agent, will land in the galaxy of digital offer creation next month.

Her role is to help small biz owners build their landing pages fluently by first getting to the heart of their core messages.

You see at the heart of every profitable landing page on the internet someone got  their customer avatar’s demographics and psychographics right.

That person, probably an experienced marketer, understood their avatar’s deepest desires, the objections they’ll tell themselves , the value proposition that resonates with them etc.

 Translating all this information  into a body of core messages makes any landing page a conversion cha-ching, cha-ching machine.

You must get your  messagign on point if you’re in the business of selling online.

So to get back to Amy…

 I designed  her as a coach, a conversion copywriter and a marketing expert all rolled into one.

Even though she is a single agent, she can coach up to 3 different personas.

The coding we’re doing allows us to adjust her coaching style  based solely on the user’s feedback in  response to a highly structured prompt.

I know right. 

Pretty darn good but  I think this  is the stuff entrepreneurs were made for…to figure things out, find solutions for our businesses and our customers.

Questions I Asked Before Building An AI Agent For My Small Business

1. Why would an AI agent be important and useful in my business. What problem would it solve?

2. What would a minimum viable product (MVP) look like?

3. What resources did I have and what would I need  to  build, test, launch 

4. What would it look like to build a hybrid where my agent handled the grind of creating a perfectly written core message based on my prompt that fed it specific input?

5. How would it be built – code, no code – and what would the tech stack be used?

6. How much would it cost: time, money etc. 

See what I did there? I asked myself simple logical questions that led me down the rabbit hole, thinking about all the resources needed to bring my AI agent to life  in my small business.

Once I had all the answers, my team and I began out build out, with a due date of April 17th.

What Tech Stack Did I Use?

I’ve been creating scalable structured prompts for well over 24 months, ever since GPT-3 conclusively proved it could write at least moderately well (hallucinations aside). 

I’ve built landing pages, sales funnels with these pieces of code (as I like to call my prompts).

But a real coder or software developer I am not. 

So I relied on my systems administrator who decided to build on Laravel because of cost efficiency.

And when we loaded all the AI models – like Claude, GPT-4o, Deepseek V3, Gemini, Qwen Coder and others – we went with Deepseek because it’s comparable to other state-of-the-art models at ridiculously low cost.

My systems team is doing full coding. 

Yes, I know  tools like Aider or Cline present the no coder offer. 

 You give them instructions and prompts and they write the code.  And to be honest, this is really what the future of AI looks like: tools that run semi-autonomously or even autonomously.

But coders will be coders and I’m not mad at the decision to use code for Amy.

However,  you really don’t need to code or be a software developer to build an AI agent. 

What you need to be is a small business owner with an idea to improve your workflow and a good enough vocabulary to know what to ask for. 

In so many instances when you build an AI agent for your small business, it’s a case of  NCR (no code required).

Key Learnings When Building An AI Agent For Your  Small Business 

So let’s end this with all the promises I made at the top.

 What’s the biggest lesson  can you learn from a willingness to build an AI agent your small business?

If you got this far it says something about your curiosity and deep interest

 So where do you go from here?

One of my favourite mentors on the topic Chris Penn says the  first place you start is with a question: 

What tasks do I currently do that an AI agent could take over?

  Do they have the skills suited for such a task?

Can you articulate your needs clearly first to yourself and then to an AI?”

Second, once you’ve done your audit and you know which area you’d like to begin with – start small.

 Work with a developer or a no-code app. 

In either case, you’re rolling up your sleeves, dusting off  your keyboard, and sitting down to plan (if you’re wearing the small biz/  project hat)   

OR

You’re working with  the AI model of your choice to see how you could create an agent that can handle tasks that are repetitive, overwhelming, or within your weak areas and blind spots. 

In this scenario you/re taking on the no code build out yourself. It’s rubber meets the road now.

You need to focus, build, iterate, test etc.

Next, once you have your AI agent up and running, you need to focus on your prize and start extracting real value from it and since it is a MVP you need to continue to test and guide.

This is how the close to great AI agents are built. Really it’s determinations and knowing exactly how you need it to evolve over time.

Why Every Small Business Needs An AI Agent.

This a a new world. I know you’ve heard me say it a million times here on these blog streets 

But  in this world Agentic AI represents a massive shift, because this is not about sitting  behind a keyboard and creating a prompt and getting an output.

 Charlene Li, a voice I  respect on the topic says  with AI agents sys we have shifted to a world “where agents can perceive context, reason through multi-step processes, and take independent actions,  ” 

They work independently.

Since  aim of an AI agent is to achieve a specific goal.  The most amazing part of all this is that agents  can  to learn and adapt through a continuous loop of planning, acting, and reflecting

As a small business onwer you set the path, with a goal the agent accesses data, skills, and applications, making decisions to accomplish that goal—often without you in the loop.

Read that again because this part is important you’re no longer in the loop. This is where the real opportunity is Because in  a world run by AI agents and were getting there, what distinguishes you, is your brand.

 Don’t Neglect Your Brand 

 We are in a time  an era when we don’t need to ask search engines or social media for answers.

It’s a different then where we’ve come from. 

An era AI trains on our material, recognises our work and then recommends us in search.

It’s scary. Some would call it theft. 

But is there an upside for us?

Yes. Have a big bold brand. Stand out on the internet, let it learn your insights , opinions but not your methodology. 

 Guide it so you and your business  shows up in its models.

I know this requires letting go of fear, hesitancy. but you don’t have much time.

The fact is as a small business owner tou need to be AI forward. You take what’s out htere and make it work for you.

To add values, serve others and yes, earn profit too.

You’re good at what you do. An Ai agent will make your flows and processes better. 

You should make the time to learn