How AI Is Rebuilding Small Businesses from Sales to Strategy with Nikonomics

When it feels like everyone on Twitter is using AI, it’s easy to believe the wave has already passed. But as Nikolas Hulewsky reminded me in our conversation, we’re still early. Most people are only scratching 5–10% of AI’s potential, even big players like Microsoft and Meta report that just 30% of their code is AI-assisted.

For local service businesses, that means the easy wins are still out there. Here are the biggest insights and examples from Nikonomics.

1) We’re early: The easy wins are still on the table

It may seem like everybody’s using AI, but majority isn't even scratching the surface. Nik emphasized that while the buzz makes AI seems to be everywhere, most businesses haven’t even tapped the simple, high-leverage use cases. Instead of chasing futuristic “AI agents,” focus on the easy tasks such as organizing information, capturing leads, automating follow-up, and summarizing conversations. Those moves alone can unlock huge time savings.

2) Organize your AI, and your AI will organize you

Nik shared how a writer named Abby structures her LLMs with Projects and reference docs.

Nothing fancy—just thoughtful architecture:

• Create Projects (work, personal, each client, each initiative).
• Pin reference docs (SOPs, pricing, offer templates, tone/style, FAQs).
• Keep conversations inside the right project so the model retains relevant context.

Nik immediately adopted this and saw step-change leverage. If your chat is a graveyard of one-off prompts, this is your fix.

3) After-hours lead capture: AI that picks up the phone

Leads hit at 10:47pm. Humans sleep. AI doesn’t.

• Tools like THYNK run AI customer service reps to answer calls after hours, capture lead details, and push them into your CRM.
• Expect a tiny response lag today (systems deliberately wait 2–2.5 seconds to avoid talking over you), but transparency helps: “Hi, I’m an AI assistant. I'm happy to help and I’ll pass this to the team first thing.”

Outbound is possible too: when a Facebook lead hits at 3:07am, an AI can call back, qualify, and book a slot for morning follow-up.

4) Web chat + CRM enrichment = faster, better sales work

• Put an AI chat widget on your site to answer FAQs and convert interest into a CRM contact.
• Clean and enrich your prospect lists before the team dials: tools like Clay can pull LinkedIn, website, and firmographic data and rank who to call first.
• Upstream, Browse AI can scrape actual websites (not just Google Business Profiles), grabbing hours, services, and contact info so you’re fishing in a less crowded pond.

5) Record more, remember better: transcripts are a superpower

Nik wears a Limitless pendant to capture conversations and uses Zoom notetakers (Otter, Fathom, Fireflies) in meetings.

Why it matters:

• Auto-summarize meetings, extract tasks, and email minutes.
• Build SOPs from real conversations (onboarding, finance, vendor calls).
• Reduce “He said / She said”: check the transcript, not your memory.
• Coach your sales team at scale: mine transcripts for talk/listen ratios, follow-ups, closing behaviors, and gaps without riding along all day.

Caveat: respect recording laws (two-party consent states); be upfront.

6) From podcast to knowledge base

My own vision for the OWNR OPS Podcast: a searchable AI knowledge base where you can ask, “What do guests recommend about building a sales team?” and get signal-rich answers.

Nik’s advice:

• Clean transcripts (remove filler).
• Tag by industry, business size, topic, and outcome.
• Store so your AI can retrieve the right snippets without blowing the context window.

LLMs are getting bigger context windows fast, but good data hygiene will always win.

7) Where the money is (right now)

• Teaching AI to niches: not scam, busy operators want applied guidance. A focused bootcamp beats 100 hours of YouTube.
• “Wrappers” that speed up building: Cursor/Replit/Lovable/Hugging Face toolchains to ship small apps and internal tools quickly.
• Architects > Agents (for now): you don’t need a fully autonomous robot to win. You need a clean system that saves time today.

A 7-Step Playbook You Can Run This Week

1. Pay for a pro plan (GPT/Claude/Gemini/Perplexity) you need higher limits and Projects.
2. Create Projects: Work, Personal, each business/client, and your top 2 initiatives. Add a one-pager “About us,” offers, and tone.
3. Add a site chatbot wired to your FAQs and CRM (GoHighLevel, Jobber, etc.).
4. After-hours call capture: pilot an AI answering service for 30 days. Track booked jobs saved.
5. Transcribe everything: enable a Zoom notetaker; try a pendant if you’re often in the field.
6. Lead enrichment sprint: export last 90 days of leads, run Clay-style enrichment, and rank who to call first.
7. Weekly AI hour: protect 60 minutes to improve one workflow (template, SOP, or follow-up automation). Ship one small win per week.

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