Small Business CURRENTS

Amazon Seller Assistant is no longer limited to answering seller questions or directing users to relevant resources. With its agentic AI upgrade, it can analyze account-wide Seller Central data, reason through operational issues, recommend next steps, and execute approved actions on a seller’s behalf. This changes how sellers can manage inventory, account health, compliance, listings, and advertising workflows.

Launching a business is exciting. Growing one is where the real work begins, and it’s also where most of the good advice runs out. I’ve spent years in operations, consulting, corporate strategy, M&A, and asset management, helping organizations evaluate investments, solve complex problems, and plan for long-term growth — and I still do that work today, full-time, alongside leading a beauty platform.

The worst advice a small business owner gets about AI is “keep up.” You can’t. I say that as someone who works with these tools all day, every day. The model that impressed everyone in March looked ordinary by August. The tool somebody’s nephew swore by in spring was abandoned by fall. If your AI strategy is chasing what’s new, you have signed up for a treadmill that speeds up every quarter, and your actual business, the one with customers and payroll, gets your leftover attention.

A report from Gusto by Nich Tremper and Tom Bowen found that small businesses increasingly use AI to build and grow their companies. Almost two-thirds of startups used AI to make their launch easier. Small businesses are using AI to increase productivity and grow revenue. And companies that embraced the technology were quicker to hire in the 12 months following startup.

Small businesses have always been engines of ambition. But today, many owners are thinking about growth in bigger, more complex ways than they have in the past. Despite lingering risks, small businesses are eyeing growth. In TD research conducted earlier this year, 93% of small business owners said they were likely to consider applying for a loan or line of credit within the next 12 to 18 months.

There is a trap that catches a surprising number of small business owners, and it rarely looks like a problem while it is happening. It looks like success. Orders pick up. The phone rings more. You add a second employee, then a third. And because there is no time to stop and rebuild how the business runs, you handle the extra volume the only way you can: by working harder inside the systems you already have. The spreadsheet gets another tab. The paper contracts get a second filing cabinet.

For a small retailer or e-commerce business owner, finding products to sell may be the easy part of running the business. Finding the right supplier can require hours of research, requests for quotes, price comparisons, negotiations over minimum orders and production schedules, sample orders, and countless decisions about cost, quality, and reliability. Large companies can assign teams to that work. Small business owners often do it themselves.

The holiday season remains the single most consequential stretch of the year for small business revenue. It accounts for 30% to 50% of annual revenue for small businesses, making fourth-quarter sales critical for their yearly survival and success. Shoppers are starting their holiday browsing and buying earlier every year, spreading their budgets across weeks instead of concentrating spend into a single weekend.

When customers buy a technical service, they are often being asked to approve work they cannot independently evaluate. That creates a communication problem for small-business owners. The more complicated the service becomes, the more tempting it is to prove expertise by explaining every technical detail. But customers usually do not need a lecture. They need enough clarity to make a good decision. In my own work in automotive diagnostics, I have seen the same pattern repeatedly.

Small business owners have grown accustomed to operating in uncertain conditions. But uncertainty has a cost — and right now, businesses are feeling it in everything from fuel prices and borrowing costs to hiring decisions. This month, William Stern and Dean Lyulkin look at three areas small business owners should be watching: continuing turmoil in energy markets, the rising cost of long-term capital, and a labor market where employers aren’t doing much hiring — or firing.