BEST AI TOOLS FOR BUSINESS
Decide What Is Worth Adopting.
There is no list of best AI tools that survives contact with your firm. There is a way to test any tool against how you actually work, and this is it, in nine questions.
WHO THE AI FILTER IS FOR
Who the AI filter is for.
Owners of small professional firms who are sold AI weekly and cannot tell a real one from a demo. Attorneys, dentists, accountants, clinics, med spas and home service operators with a budget and nobody in a technology seat.
It is for the moment somebody says we should be using AI for this and nobody knows how to answer. The filter answers in five minutes with a reason you can repeat.
HOW THE FILTER WORKS
How the filter works.
Name the tool and the job
One tool, one job it is supposed to do. The filter is deliberately narrow, because tools that do six things are how firms end up paying for five they never touch.
Answer the nine
Three on your data, three on your process, three on your team. They are printed above in plain English, they take about five minutes, and not one of them needs an IT person to answer.
Read the verdict
Adopt, test small, or leave it. The reason is whichever question you answered no to, which is also the thing to fix first, and it is short enough to repeat to whoever else has to agree.
GET THE PROMPT
The prompt is yours to keep.
The nine questions above are the prompt. Copy them, paste them into whichever assistant you already use, describe the next tool somebody pitches you, and you get the same nine question analysis with nobody in the room.
That is deliberate. A list of tools is out of date within a quarter. A test you own runs on whatever gets pitched next year.
If you would rather have my read than your own, send me the tool and your nine answers and I write back with the verdict and the one risk I would watch. Nothing is held back for a call. If you want the thing built once the answer is yes, AI Systems is $1,000 a month, three months, then month to month, no setup fee.
And if running the filter says AI is not your problem yet, I will tell you that too.
Proof, attached here
Pricing
What It Costs
$1,000/month
Per service line, monthly
Three months, because nothing real happens faster. If there is no movement by month three, you leave. Month to month after that. Thirty days notice in writing. The filter and the prompt cost nothing. The AI Systems line is $1,000 a month, no setup fee, and you own the accounts and everything built in them.
One service $1,000 a month, two $1,799, three $2,499. No setup or onboarding fee.
Get Free Audit
I will crawl your whole site, score it 0 to 100, and send you a ranked list of what is costing you customers. Free, about a day, no call attached unless you want one.
AI TOOLS FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The nine questions in the filter.
Nine questions in three groups. Answer them about one tool and you get a verdict on that tool. Answer them about the job and you usually discover you do not need a tool at all.
They are all here. Answer them on paper or in your head, about one tool and one job. Every question is written so that yes is the good answer, so all you are doing is counting your nos.
The first three are a gate rather than a score. One no in the data group and the answer is leave it, whatever the other six say. After that the count decides: no nos, adopt it. One no, test it small, one person and one job for thirty days, and the no is the thing you are testing. Two or more nos and the job is not ready, so no tool will make it ready.
The questions are the same nine every time. A repeatable test stops the decision going to whoever saw the demo most recently.
Your data
Questions one to three. What the tool has to see, and who else ends up holding it. For a practice with client records this group is the gate, not the last question, and it disqualifies more tools than price ever does.
Your process
Questions four to six. Whether the job repeats the same way, how often it comes round, and what happens when the tool is wrong. If the job is judgment rather than repetition, no tool is the right answer.
Your team
Questions seven to nine. Who would use it every day, whether it removes a step or adds one, and who can turn it off. A tool with no owner is a subscription, not a system.
| Ask yourself | A yes means | A no means |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Can you name in one sentence exactly what this tool has to see to do the job? | You know what is at stake, so the other eight questions are worth answering. | Leave it. Nobody can price a risk they cannot describe in a sentence. |
| 2. Would you be comfortable if a client found out this vendor had seen their file? | The data group is clear and you can judge the tool on the work it does. | Leave it, or find the version of the job that never touches the file. |
| 3. Has the vendor put in writing what leaves your systems, where it is stored, and whether your information trains their model? | You have something to hold them to later. | Ask once, in writing. If it still does not arrive, that is the answer. |
| 4. Does this job come round on a rhythm, weekly or more often, whether or not anyone remembers it? | Rhythm is where software pays. This is a real candidate. | It happens too rarely to carry a subscription. Keep doing it by hand. |
| 5. Does the job follow the same steps every time, with an ending you would recognise? | There is something to hand over, so it can be handed over. | This is judgment, not repetition. No tool is the right answer here. |
| 6. If the tool got it wrong on a Tuesday, would somebody catch it before a client did? | A wrong answer costs you an afternoon instead of a client. | Keep it away from clients until somebody is checking the output. |
| 7. Can you name the one person who would open this every day? | It has an owner, which is the whole difference between a system and a subscription. | Name that person first. Buying it before you do is how the last one died. |
| 8. Does it take a step out of that person's day instead of adding one? | They will still be using it after the novelty wears off. | It gets quietly abandoned inside a month. Look for the version that removes work. |
| 9. If it started doing something wrong, do you know who turns it off, and can they do it without calling the vendor? | You can move fast, because you can undo it. | Get the off switch into your own hands before it touches anything real. |
COMMON QUESTIONS
Questions about picking AI tools.
How can I make a thousand dollars a day using AI?
Not by buying a tool. In an existing practice the money AI touches is the hour of admin per person per day it removes and the enquiries you currently lose after five in the evening, and both of those are worth real money in a firm that already has demand. If the demand is not there, no tool creates it.
What are the top 5 AI tools?
The general purpose assistants are ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, and the fifth slot belongs to whatever is built into the software your practice already runs on. That last one usually beats a new subscription, because it already has your information and your team already opens it.
What AI is better than ChatGPT?
For a business decision the question is which one is better at your job, not which one is better. Claude and Gemini are each stronger than ChatGPT at some tasks and weaker at others, and for most firms the deciding factor is which one connects to the systems you already use.
Which AI does Elon Musk use?
Grok, from his own company xAI. Worth knowing and not worth basing a decision on. Which model a public figure prefers says nothing about whether it fits a dental practice in Henderson, which is what the nine questions are for.
How do I know a tool is not a privacy problem?
Ask three things before you sign anything: what leaves your systems, where it is stored, and whether your information trains their model. If a vendor cannot answer all three in writing, that is the answer. This is the first group of questions in the filter for exactly that reason.
What does it cost to have this done with me?
AI Systems is one service line at $1,000 a month, three months, then month to month with no setup fee, covering the after hours front desk, moving work between your tools, custom builds and training your people on all of it. Two lines together are $1,799.
Other services
The rest of Resources.
Where this work lands
The pages a reader of this one usually wants next.
LAS VEGAS DIGITAL MARKETER
Who does the work.
I keep this filter because I get asked which tools are worth paying for several times a week.
I have been at this in the Valley for fourteen years, for north of three hundred businesses.
The person you hire is the person doing the work.
More about how I workGet Free Audit
I will crawl your whole site, score it 0 to 100, and send you a ranked list of what is costing you customers. Free, about a day, no call attached unless you want one.