Most owners who use AI say it paid off. Most who haven’t started say they haven’t seen a need.
A new survey of 691 small business owners found that 43% use AI and 70% of them say it helped their finances. Cost and complexity are rarely what holds the rest back.
A new national survey of small business owners has a simple message: most owners who use AI say it has paid off, and the reason most others have not started has little to do with price. Heartland Forward released the survey, “AI on Main Street,” on October 1, 2026. Echelon Insights surveyed 691 small business owners online from September 3 to 11.
What owners who use AI report
43% of the owners surveyed use AI. Among them:
- 70% say it has had a net-positive effect on their finances.
- 93% say it saves them time, and more than half save five or more hours a week.
- 81% say it lets them do more with the same staff.
- 1 in 5 say AI-driven growth has helped them afford to hire new employees.
Heartland Forward’s president, Angie Cooper, says owners are putting the time it saves right back into growing their businesses.
Why others haven’t started
57% of the owners surveyed do not yet use AI. Cost and complexity are rarely the obstacle: 6% cite each. The bigger reason is relevance, with 52% saying they haven’t seen a need for it.
That is good news: it is a gap that seeing AI work on a real task can close.
Most owners learned by trying
83% of owners who use AI say they taught themselves by trying it. Only 12% learned through a class or training program. Owners in heartland states said training on marketing and finding customers (38%) and on choosing the right AI tools (29%) would be most valuable.
What Forjance is doing
You don’t have to teach yourself. Forjance’s AI team is already at work inside real businesses, handling the day-to-day: customer replies, reports to the owner, social content and marketing documents.
- We set it up around your business. Your company, your words, your way of working.
- Start with one real task. Bring something you’ve been meaning to get done to a walkthrough and see what the team produces.
- You stay in control. It is private to your business. Nothing goes out until a person on your side approves it.
Seeing a need starts with seeing it work on your own business. Forged, not found.
About the survey: it was an online, non-probability sample of small business owners with 0 to 499 employees, weighted to U.S. Census Bureau benchmarks, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points.