For years I've run a large part of my business from my head. Not exclusively. I had notes, databases, spreadsheets, diaries and scraps of paper scattered around the place. But there was still a huge amount that lived upstairs. Design ideas. Client conversations. Pricing systems. Workshop processes. Future projects. Things I needed to remember. Things I didn't want to remember but somehow still had to.
The reality of running a small business is that you don't just do the thing you're good at. On any given day I can be talking to a client about an engagement ring, chasing a supplier, looking for an old quotation, updating website prices and trying to work out why something isn't behaving as it should. Somewhere in amongst all that I'm supposed to be designing jewellery.
Over time I noticed something. I wasn't spending enough time on the parts of the business that I actually enjoy. I love developing new concepts. I love solving design problems. I love chatting to clients and hearing their stories. Yet more and more of my day seemed to involve hunting for information, digging through emails and trying to remember where I'd stored something six months earlier.
Over the past year I've been building a new system and at the centre of it is what I can only describe as a second brain. Think of it as a note-taking system on steroids. It stores processes, ideas, workshop notes, marketing plans, goals, pricing information, lessons learned, future projects and all sorts of other things connected to the business. I've even started storing observations about how I work, where I get stuck and the habits that seem to help or hinder me.
Then I connected AI to it. The interesting bit isn't that AI can answer questions. We all know that already. The interesting bit is that it can answer questions with the context of my business and me behind it. Instead of starting every conversation from scratch, it starts with years of accumulated knowledge. If I need information about a previous project, a workshop process I haven't used for months, notes relating to a design idea or a reminder of a decision I made six months ago, it's usually there.
One unexpected benefit has been email. For years I found myself living in my inbox. I'd open it with the best intentions and twenty minutes later I'd be somewhere completely different, responding to things that weren't particularly important simply because they had arrived most recently. Now I receive a couple of AI reviews of my inbox each day. It highlights what genuinely needs my attention, what can wait and what is probably noise. It sounds like a small thing, but it changes the shape of the day.
The administration hasn't disappeared. Nor should it. What has changed is that I spend less time being pulled in ten different directions at once. I spend more time designing, more time developing products and more time talking to clients. More time thinking about where the business is heading rather than simply reacting to whatever lands next.
Building this system has taken a lot of work and I'm still very much in the middle of it. The AI doesn't magically know everything. It needs training. It needs structure. It needs good information. Some days it gets things wrong. Other days it genuinely surprises me.
What I can say with confidence is that I'm enjoying the business more and more.
A few years ago I'd often sit down at my desk wondering what administrative mountain was waiting for me that day. These days I'm more likely to be wondering what I can create.
I understand why people are cautious about AI. I was too, but as a tool, and particularly for a slightly disorganised business owner whose brain naturally wants to jump between a dozen different things, it has been one of the most useful things I've introduced into the business for years.
It hasn't replaced my business. It's helping me get back to the parts of it that I enjoy most.