While it might seem new and intimidating, machine learning in business is already bringing massive benefits to companies and consumers alike.

From increasingly effective product suggestions to accurate journey time predictions and advanced customer analytics, machine learning is an incredibly powerful tool which lets you analyze every important aspect of your business without wasting human hours on the task.

But what exactly is machine learning, and how do you go from knowing that to actually using it?

“Instead of using labels to teach an AI what each object it’s looking at is, this DeepMind project teaches itself because it learns to recognise images and sounds by matching them up with what it can see and hear.

This method of learning is almost exactly like how humans think and learn to understand the world around them.” – Vaughn Highfield, How Google DeepMind is learning like a child: DeepMind uses videos to teach itself about the world

In this article we will cover:

• What is machine learning?
• Benefits of machine learning in business
• Applications of machine learning in business
• Different types of machine learning in business
• Real-world examples of machine learning in business

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If you’re looking for the best AI tools for small business, you’re in the right place!

Running a small business can be challenging, but with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), you now have a powerful ally to overcome obstacles and achieve success.

From streamlining financial management to automating recruitment, AI tools have become indispensable assets for small businesses.

In this comprehensive list, we present 50 cutting-edge AI tools that address all the pain points faced by small businesses (don’t fear, we know them all!).

If you’re short on time, here’s a quick list of the tools sorted into categories:

• Cross-functional AI tools for small businesses
• Financial management
• Human resource management
• Marketing and customer relationship management
• Operational efficiency
• Technology and data management
• Compliance and Legal

Where did The E Myth Summary come from? Michael E. Gerber is the answer.

And when Michael E. Gerber gives you advice for starting a business you listen to it.

With a career spanning over 40 years and working with hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide, Gerber’s expertise is invaluable to anyone looking to start their own venture. Lucky for us, he’s written several books on the topic, the most famous of which I’ll be summarizing in this post.

This E Myth summary will take the core business tips from Gerber’s work and condense them into a single post. It’s all of the value, proven with examples from companies like Facebook and Zenefits, and it doesn’t need you to spend 40 years to learn it.

In particular, I’ll be covering:

• Balancing your business personalities
• Creating a business, not a job
• Working on your business, not in it
• Why your business needs systems
• The idea of your business being your product
• Motivating employees with the idea behind their work
• Make topics human to make them interesting

Let’s get started.

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Greek philosophers can teach us a great deal. Let’s, for example, take this quote:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana

Big George, originally Jorge, makes a valid point with this one. The quote is often used to talk about giant historical shifts or wars or something similar. Yet, it’s equally true of smaller things.

In business, as in life, someone has already come before you and done the same thing. These people have failed, learned, and then improved. We, in the future, are in the fortunate position of being able to learn from their failures and successes if we choose to.

And this is why we choose to bang on about the past so much. Whether it be recent history like The History of SaaS, 20th Century history like How Does a Franchise Work?, further back like The History of Surgical Processes, or even further back to the beginnings of civilization like How Were The Pyramids Built?, we often like to take lessons from the past.

In this Process Street article, we’re going to ancient Greece to check out 9 key philosophers and see what business lessons we can take from their lives and work.

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Keeping everyone on the same page in your business is easy with today’s technology. Using cloud-based calendars, you can have everyone synced up all the time from any device. In this post, I will go through our favorite setups to ensure your team never misses a meeting again.

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Business systemization gained notoriety from the bestselling book by Michael E. Gerber, published in 1986, The E-Myth – Why most businesses don’t work and what to do about it. In 2011, this groundbreaking book was named the number 1 business book of all time by The Wall Street Journal. In The E-Myth (Entrepreneurial Myth) Gerber explains how businesses are usually started by those who know the content of a business – so-called “Technicians”, people who know how to do the technical work involved in an enterprise – rather than by those who know business itself – so-called “Entrepreneurs” – and why start-ups are therefore by definition prone to failing.

In order for a company or business to thrive, it must move beyond relying on the so-called “Technician” who is now also the company owner. Gerber uses the franchise model to demonstrate how a business does this: Franchises are prototype businesses that are operated in terms of well-documented systems, i.e., there are manuals describing in minute detail how to run the business. Gerber argues that the entrepreneur should spend time creating a business that can run by itself, without the presence of the entrepreneur, and this is achieved through business systemization.

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Effective HR management tips prevents company-wide anarchy.

From solving internal disputes, to presenting a united front to customers, to just plain abiding by the law, HR is a vital discipline which is all too often generalized and pushed out of mind.

That’s why today I’ll be going through 12 HR management tips to help you keep your employees engaged and your company running smoothly. From the utter basics such as being open to hearing feedback on techniques like using social media to grow your network, keep reading to learn everything you need to know to avoid being another Michael Scott.

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Systematizing your business is one of the biggest challenges any founder or executive faces when trying to scale.

I’ve seen it personally in my businesses and in the experiences of our customers. It’s the problem which led to us creating Process Street when I ran a small business. It’s the problem people and businesses of all sizes now come to Process Street to overcome.

Thousands of customers like Accenture, AstraZeneca, and Salesforce are solving processes from small business needs to critical enterprise and infrastructure processes.

It’s important to learn not just how to get things done, but how to do that repeatedly, effectively, and efficiently as your team grows.

This is where business systematization comes in.

A huge part of that is process management. According to our research, 42% of respondents say their teams have no time to create processes. You cannot systematize if you fail to document your processes.

In fact, process documentation is only the first step. What about adherence, integration, automation?

That’s why, as Process Street’s CEO, I was so excited to collaborate with Foundr to create a course to take you from process-less to process pro. The course is now available for registrations – you have until September 8th to get involved, so make sure to register ASAP if you’re interested.

I’ll give you the platform and the playbook to systemize your business in just 10 minutes per day, all delivered through Foundr’s intuitive learning experience.

Foundr magazine is one of the leading media outlets for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and executives. The course comes carefully prepared with video lessons, playbooks, and an explanation of my proven DIA Method.

As part of the Process Street family, I’m offering you the chance to register now and get 4 free masterclass lessons where I’ll explain my 10 minute MVP approach to supercharging processes in record time.

Click here to register!

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This is a guest post by Victor Eduoh, a SaaS content strategy consultant and copywriter. He helps early- and growth-stage SaaS companies drive growth, using the SaaS content topic clusters strategy and Product-Led Storytelling, two concepts he developed.

“And, after all, winning business is what writing proposals is all about.” Tom Sant, in his bestselling book, Persuasive Business Proposals, continued:

“Although a great proposal by itself seldom wins a deal, a bad proposal will definitely lose one.“

Tom is right.

Writing a consulting proposal isn’t a silver bullet to land your next client. But fail to craft an excellent, professional one and you won’t close any deal.

Since you found your way to this post, you don’t want that, right? We don’t want it either.

So, in this Process Street article, you’ll find ten practical steps to make your next consulting proposal excellent (i.e., worthy of closing deals).

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is a consulting proposal?
• How do I write a consulting proposal?
• What should you include in a consulting proposal?
• How do you format a consulting proposal?
• My proposal winning superpowers

Sound good? Read on for a free checklist to get started.
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Knowing how to write a procedure is a key skill for anyone looking to build a successful business. Procedures are vital to consistent success for many of the same reasons that processes are important – they let you reliably repeat your successes, isolate and correct your mistakes, and create a business model that lets you scale your operations.

If you don’t know how to write a procedure then you’re dead in the water. Get it right, and the resulting efficiency boosts can put you on track to eclipse your competitors.

This Process Street post will cover the following topics to help you write effective procedures:

• What is a procedure?
• Why are procedures important?
• Preparing to write your procedures
• How to write an effective procedure
• How to write an effective procedure

Read on to learn the 13 steps to writing your business’ procedures effectively, in a way that they will actually be followed instead of getting read once and then forgotten.

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