AI for the Rest of Us — May 2026
This month: what AI actually did for small businesses in April, Steve's take on the biggest AI development worth knowing about, and one tool that is genuinely useful.
## A Note From Steve
This is the first issue of AI for the Rest of Us — a monthly note for small business owners who keep hearing AI will change everything but haven't been told what that actually means in plain English. I had a dozen conversations with owners last month who'd been pitched something they didn't need by someone who didn't understand their business. That's the gap I'm trying to fill — both with the blog and with this newsletter. No hype, no pitches, just what I'd tell you over coffee.
This Month's Posts
Everything published on the blog this month, with the key takeaway from each.
Is AI Actually Right for Your Business? Here is an Honest Framework.
The most common thing I hear from small business owners is that AI is for tech people. Here is why that belief is costing you, and a plain-English framework for figuring out whether AI actually makes sense for your situation.
The Biggest Mistake Small Businesses Make With Technology
It is not buying the wrong tool. It is buying any tool before understanding the problem. A pattern I have seen dozens of times in 30 years — and how to break it.
What 30 Percent Time Saved Actually Looks Like for a Small Business
A real story about a business running since 1989, a wall of three-ring binders, and what happened when they finally decided to dip their toes into technology.
You Do Not Need a 50000 Dollar Custom App. You Might Need This Instead.
The spectrum from off-the-shelf to custom build — and how to figure out where your problem actually sits.
Steve's Take — The AI Development Worth Knowing About This Month
Every SaaS tool you already pay for now has an "AI feature." Your CRM. Your accounting software. Your scheduling tool. Your email client. They're all adding an AI button somewhere on the screen and pitching it as transformation.
Here's what I've watched happen with clients this month: they're getting bombarded with these features, can't tell which ones are useful and which are window dressing, and end up either ignoring all of them or trying to use all of them at once. Both failure modes cost time.
My honest take: most of these bolted-on AI features are mediocre. They were built fast because the vendor was under pressure to ship something with "AI" in the changelog. A few are good — usually the ones that automate a specific narrow task the product already does well. The rest are summary buttons and chat windows that don't save you time.
The move: ignore the AI features in tools you're already using until you have a specific problem you're trying to solve. Then check if your existing tool handles it before buying anything new. Most of the time, the answer is somewhere you already pay for.
Tool Worth Knowing
Zapier
Zapier connects apps together so they pass data back and forth automatically. Form submission to spreadsheet. New email to a task list. Calendar event to a Slack message. It's the gateway drug to automation for small businesses, and for good reason — for simple, predictable flows, it's hard to beat.
Who it's right for: anyone running a handful of cloud tools who finds themselves copying data between them. Free tier handles 100 tasks a month. Paid plans start around $20/month and scale from there.
Who it's not right for: anyone trying to automate something complicated. Once you need branching logic, error handling, or anything that depends on judgment, Zapier becomes expensive and brittle. I've seen clients with Zapier setups so tangled that fixing one broken step takes longer than just doing the task by hand.
Use it for the simple stuff. The moment you find yourself drawing diagrams to explain your Zap, you've outgrown the tool.
One More Thing
A client asked me last week what the difference is between hiring me and hiring a consultant from a big firm. The honest answer: when you call me, you get me. There's no junior associate doing the work and a senior partner taking the credit. There's no handoff. If your project is too small to interest a big firm, that's exactly the kind of project I'm built for.
If that sounds useful, you know where to find me.
If someone forwarded this to you and you want to subscribe, you can do that at brincore.com/newsletter.
And if you have a problem in your business that technology might solve — that is exactly what the free conversation is for.
Book a Free Conversation with Steve at brincore.com/contact.
— Steve Denney Brincore | brincore.com
Enjoyed this issue?
Get Every Issue in Your Inbox
Monthly. Free. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Have a Problem Worth Solving?
Every engagement starts with a free conversation. No pitch, no pressure.
Book a Free Conversation with SteveAI for the Rest of Us
Not Ready to Talk Yet? Stay in the Loop.
Free, every week. Plain-English advice on what AI can actually do for your business — written by someone who has been building AI systems in production since 2019. No hype. No jargon. Unsubscribe anytime.
Join business owners who are done being sold AI they don't need.