Sara Russell uses AI to help her run her marketing, sales, finance, and product development departments.Rose Gaffney/Loving Local NYCSara Russell took her bath-and-body business full-time after being laid off in 2023.She was hesitant to use AI until she started using Claude to help run her business.She said AI's negative impacts could reach a tipping point that would make her stop using it.This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sara Russell, a 37-year-old small business founder based in Brooklyn, NY. It's been edited for length and clarity.I've known about AI for a while, but I was always hesitant to use it. I don't want it to take away my creative freedom.I've run my small bath-and-body business full-time since 2023, and the creative side of the business has never been a problem for me. Building the foundation for a strong, solid company is the part I had very little experience doing.After I started using Claude projects in February, I had a light bulb moment. I created Claude projects for every business department I needed, which became a game changer for me. I feel like I'm not just turning a hobby into a small business; I'm building a business that could, in theory, scale.Still, what's important to me is how I use AI. It's always going to be a tool, not a partner. Business Insider wants to talk to founders of AI-powered companies with fewer than 10 workers, and employees working alongside AI agents, to understand what the "Tiny Teams" era really feels like — the wins, the fears, and the human skills that stand out. Share your story by filling out this quick form. I took my business full-time after my layoffIn 2020, I was on YouTube, and, like everyone else who wasn't going outside, I kept coming up with new hobbies to try. I came across a video of this woman making soap, and decided to try it out. After making it the first time, I was obsessed.I made everyone soap for Christmas that year, and in 2021, I launched an Etsy store, which I ran alongside my full-time marketing job. For two years, I slowly built out different collections of soaps on weekends and after work until January 2023, when I was laid off from my full-time job.I'm very blessed to have a husband who can pay our bills, so I don't have to make rent from the number of soaps I'm selling. I had already launched wholesale in 2022, and that was slowly growing. So I decided that, for six months, I was going to try to take this full-time.I didn't know how to run a companyAfter about three months, I realized I never wanted to go back to a different job, but I didn't really know the logistics of running a company. I knew that SEO and Google Analytics data were important, but I didn't really know what they were. Same with different products and sales terms.I spent a lot of time Googling things, taking LinkedIn Learning courses, asking people in small business group chats, and watching YouTube. Often, answers I'd find wouldn't always apply exactly to my situation. I'd spend three hours researching a topic, only to walk away with one actionable thing that makes sense for me.I would randomly ask ChatGPT questions or see if it could help me with drafting an Instagram caption, but on the copy side, I hated 75% of what it would spit out, and I was never that organized with it for it to feel especially useful. I also didn't want to use it for visual design. I wanted to maintain that control over my creative eye.I had a lightbulb moment with Claude this yearEarlier this year, when Claude was in the news a lot, my husband, who uses it at an enterprise level, told me about how I could use it and organize chats into projects. As we kept talking, I realized that this could be super useful to me in the departments of my business that I don't know how to run.There's a lot of hesitation about using AI in the creative community, especially when you're diving into design and other creative applications. Creating AI photos and videos is very frowned upon, and so there's a hesitation about what to use AI for.On the other side of things, several other business owners in the small-business space have started using it to help with their business frameworks. I'm seeing a lot more people who are open to AI in an organizational aspect. So, I decided to try it.Russell purchased a Claude subscription earlier this year.Courtesy of Sara RussellHow my AI-led business departments workI created a brand-new Claude account for $20 a month and told it that I wanted each project assigned to a different department within my company. I wanted a marketing department, sales department, finance department, and product development department. I told all the projects that I want them to be collaborative and to defer to me as the CEO of the company. They can give me ideas, but I'm the authority.The projects themselves are organized like a C-suite, but the output is treated like that of an entry-level employee. I'll have my CFO project help me inter
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