From "Is It Safe?" to "Will It Pay?"

By Naomi Withers | WBN News | October 21, 2026 Editor: Karalee Greer Subscription to WBN and being a Contributor is Free

The safety question has had two years of attention, and it deserves every minute of it.

Ask a small business owner what worries them about AI and the answer usually starts with data. Where does the customer list go? Who can see the pricing file? Is the tool learning from our contracts?

What Owners Say They Worry About

A March 2026 survey of 517 small businesses, commissioned by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, found that 82 percent already use at least one AI tool. Asked about their concerns, 42 percent named data security and privacy. Twenty-seven percent named high cost or an unclear return.

Those are the right two worries. They are getting very different amounts of help.

One Question Has Plenty Of Help

Security is the question vendors work hardest to answer, because it is the one that stops a sale. Most business-grade AI plans now state in writing whether your data is used to train their models. Your IT provider, your insurer and the vendor all have a reason to help you get this one right.

The return question has nobody assigned to it. The case study describes another company. The demo shows the tool on its best day. No one else in the conversation is paid to ask whether this particular purchase will earn its keep in your business.

That job belongs to the owner.

Where The Return Comes From

McKinsey's 2026 survey of about 1,700 organizations shows where the payoff tends to sit. Among companies attributing at least 5 percent of their earnings to AI, nearly three in four had fundamentally redesigned how the work gets done because of it. Among everyone else, about one in four had.

The difference lies in what happened around the tool. The companies seeing a return changed who does which step, what gets checked, and what stops being done at all. The tool sped up a piece of work. The redesign is what turned the time saved into money.

Those same companies were also twice as likely to have a defined way of measuring what their AI work returns. They decided in advance how they would know.

A Monday Test For Any AI Purchase

Before the next subscription renews or the next tool gets approved, write down three things.

Which piece of work will change. Name it narrowly: first drafts of quotes for repeat customers, say, or the weekly scheduling email.

What happens to the time that comes back. If nobody decides, it disappears into the day.

How you will check in ninety days. Pick a number you can count, such as quotes sent per week or hours spent on scheduling.

If you cannot fill in all three, the tool may well be safe. You simply do not know yet whether it will pay.

Why It Matters

For a business of twenty or forty people, one AI subscription is rarely a large line. Several of them, renewed without review, add up to a real cost that nobody owns.

The safety question protects the business from a bad outcome. The return question is what makes the spending worth defending. Owners who ask both will be the ones who can say, a year from now, what AI actually did for them.

About The Author

Naomi Withers | WBN News LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/naomi-withers-7044491b/

Naomi Withers is the founder of Growth Consultant Services, where she advises founders, CEOs, and executive teams on AI strategy, executive coaching, and high-performance leadership. Her advisory and coaching work is at growthconsultantservices.com/services.

Editor: Karalee Greer Subscription to WBN and being a Contributor is Free

Tags: #Naomi Withers #WBN News #Artificial Intelligence #Small Business #Return On Investment #Data Privacy #Decision Making