In October, we launched the 2024 Small Business Success and Support survey, our fall survey of small business owners across the U.S. We heard from 681 small business owners in 44 states plus the District of Columbia. As usual for our network, responses came from very small businesses: Two-thirds of the businesses had only one or two full-time employees, and 87% had fewer than five full-time employees. Main Street America’s small business surveys stand apart from other national surveys this way. For example, 38% of respondents in the October 2024 quarterly report from the National Federation of Independent Businesses had up to five full-time and part-time employees, while 68% of respondents to our survey were as small. Over 40% were retailers, and 20% were food and beverage businesses. Professional service businesses (10%), arts and entertainment organizations (7%), and personal service businesses (6%) were also well represented.
As is typical of our network, we heard from a mix of newly launched businesses and long-established community institutions, and from people of a variety of backgrounds. Thirty-six percent of the responding business owners represented enterprises launched in 2020 or more recently, and 38% had been in business for ten years or more. About 70% of respondents were women, 25% were men, and 2% were non-binary or gender nonconforming. Asked about other important parts of their identities, 7% of responding business owners indicated they were part of the LGBTQIA+ community, 5% were disabled persons, 4% were veterans, and 4% were immigrants.
Small Business Use of Artificial Intelligence
At Main Street America, we keep a keen eye on innovation and technology adoption, so in this survey, we tried to peek into the future and see how small business owners are adopting AI for their businesses. About two-thirds of respondents indicated they do not currently use AI for their businesses. Twenty-nine percent indicated they used ChatGPT. Google’s Gemini tool was the second most popular, with 7% of respondents saying they’d used it for their business.
We dug further and asked what small business owners use artificial intelligence tools for. Over one-fifth indicated that they’d used AI to generate marketing ideas or content, 25% used AI to develop business-related communications, 9% used AI to help generate business plans or operational ideas, and 2% used AI to analyze financials such as costs or revenue.