Subscribe to our newsletter to receive business tips, learn about new funding programmes, join upcoming events, take e-learning courses, and more.
Take the first step to successfully starting and growing your business.
Join for freePosted: Fri 13th Nov 2026
Rising costs, tighter resources and constant change mean many small businesses need to get more done without adding headcount.
In this session, Marinda Malan shows you how to get clear on what needs to change in your business for 2027, work out where AI can realistically take work off your plate, and set it up so it delivers.
Walk away with a clear focus for the year ahead, one task ready to hand to AI, and a plan for where to reinvest the time you get back.
How to decide what needs to change in your business to see growth in 2027
How to work out where AI fits in getting you from where you are to where you want to be
How to set AI up so it takes real work off your plate
Marinda is a commercial growth adviser and fractional executive based in Dublin.
She helps ambitious founder-led businesses identify, prioritise and act on the right growth opportunities, with a particular focus on how AI and digital technologies can drive commercial results.
Before founding Marinda Malan Consulting in 2024, she spent more than 20 years in senior commercial roles across telecoms, digital platforms and subscription businesses in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, including GM at MTN South Africa and senior director at Etisalat UAE.
She holds a BCom (Hons) in Marketing Management, a Postgraduate Diploma in Digital Business and a UCD Professional Diploma in AI for Business.
Watch more expert webinars
Access a growing collection of expert-led webinars covering marketing, sales, finance, growth and more – ready whenever you are.
Lightly edited for clarity.
Caitriona O’Connor: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s Lunch and Learn. My name is Caitriona, and I’ll be your host today. For those of you attending a Lunch and Learn for the first time, Enterprise Nation is a vibrant community platform for start-ups and small businesses.
I’m pleased to introduce Marinda Malan, who is a business growth consultant. In this session, Marinda shows you how to get clear on what needs to change in your business for 2027, work out where AI can realistically take work off your plate, and how to set it up so it delivers.
If you have any questions throughout the webinar, please post them in the chat, and we’ll do our best to answer them at the end of the session. Today’s webinar will be recorded, and we will send a follow-up email to you with the recording and further resources later today. Over to you, Marinda.
Marinda: Thanks, Caitriona, and thank you so much for the introduction. Before I start introducing myself, I see we have a few people already in the room. Please introduce yourselves in the chat.
It would be lovely to know where you’re joining from this morning – that would help me understand who’s in the room and make the conversation today a little bit more interactive. Throughout the session, I will be asking a few questions, and if you can interact and give us a perspective on the answers, it helps me to tailor it to your needs.
I’m looking forward to spending the next 29 minutes with you talking about how to plan for 2027 and how you can actually put AI to work as part of that journey. My name is Marinda. As Caitriona said, I’m a commercial growth adviser and now a fractional executive.
I’ve spent more than 20 years in corporate environments in South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and now here in Dublin, holding commercial leadership roles. During that time, most of what I needed to do was support those businesses to grow their revenue. For the past couple of years, I’ve been working with businesses of various sizes specifically on that – figuring out how to grow those businesses and make more money.
Today, we’re going to be talking about your plan for 2027, and I’m hoping to make it really practical and give you some frameworks that will be helpful for you. So let’s dive straight in.
Today, we’re going to cover three things. The first one is your 2027 plan. 2026 has been one of those watershed years where there has been so much going on in terms of politics, the economy and, most importantly, the technology opportunities and realities that we are all faced with.
If we look at 2027 and what it will take to grow, I believe that business as usual – carrying on the same way as we did in 2026 – is not going to cut it. There has been too much change in the macro environment.
Even for a small business that has ambitions to grow, I believe a degree of intentionality is much more important now than it may have been at the beginning of 2026. So that’s the first part we’re going to look at.
The second part we’re going to look at is AI. I can see the comments coming through, so thank you very much for that – we’ve got a wide range of places represented here. I’d love to hear from you how many of you are actually using AI regularly in your businesses.
Some statistics I’ve heard are that about 21% of small businesses use AI on a regular basis. That, I will tell you, is one of the biggest opportunities for a small business in 2027. I would like to reframe your perspective from looking at AI as a tool to seeing it as a resource that needs to be trained well, so that it can support you and take some tasks off your desk.
Thirdly, we’re going to look at how to bring all of that together in a way that actually supports your business. I see a few people use it regularly, and I do pick up on the caution that some people are using it with, and I fully support that. But let’s dive straight in.
If we start with thinking about your plan for the new year, typically, when I have a planning conversation about growth over a period of time, I like to ask three questions regardless of the business size. These three questions are usually particularly helpful in framing the conversation.
The first one is: where are you right now? This is really taking an honest look at multiple dimensions within your business. Depending on the size and the scale of the business, we may go deeper or lighter, but you have to start with what is working in your business right now and what is not.
The second question is: where do you actually want to go? Sometimes it’s harder than it should be to answer that question. What I’ve seen is that some business owners are so in the weeds, just managing the business and fighting fires, that it’s hard for them to even lift their heads and think about the next three months, let alone the next 12 or 24 months.
At the other end of the spectrum, you often get founders who are extremely visionary by nature. They know that they want to 10x the business or double revenue, whatever their ambition is, but they don’t necessarily know what plan is going to support it. So I want to introduce a couple of handles that may help you bring those two dimensions together and think about what the next 12 months are going to entail.
Lastly, we’re going to ask what needs to change to take you from where you are to where you want to go, and I’ll get into that when we get to that section. So let’s get straight into where you are right now in your business.
That is sometimes a bit of a loaded question, and there are so many things you can consider if you want to be comprehensive. But for today’s conversation, we have 30 minutes, so I’ve distilled it into three dimensions of your business. Within each, I’m going to give you three things to consider and evaluate your business on.
The first dimension is winning the business – that is, getting business through the front door and how healthy that is in your business. The second is how you deliver the actual work that you’ve brought through the door, and how efficient that is from a cost management and profit optimisation perspective.
The last is running the business, because that is where a lot of our time should go, but it may not necessarily get the attention it needs, and it may be possible to streamline it further. So let’s get into it.
In terms of winning the business, for me, the conversation always starts with having a clear problem to solve. But not just that – it’s also knowing that there are people who have that problem and who are willing to pay to have it solved.
From an AI and technology perspective, we see that the internet is flooded with content, propositions, new start-ups and competitors. So being clear about the problem you’re solving for an audience of customers who are willing to pay for it, and have the money to pay for it, is increasing in importance as we enter this new year.
The second component is generating leads for the business. That means getting in front of the people who are willing to pay for the problem you are solving and getting them interested in your business – to connect, to click on a link to a landing page, to register their interest. You need to get them to express their interest and become a lead in your business.
The last component here is the ability to take those leads – the people who have expressed interest in working with you – and convert them into customers at a price that works for your business. You can generate demand, and you can even convert customers.
But if the price you are charging is not sustainable for you as a business, then a recalibration is needed in this section, whether that means going back to the problem you solve and who you solve it for. That is one of the most important acid tests.
As I go through this, I want you to think about your business. You will have a sense of certain things that you do really well and certain things that may need to be improved. In the next section, we will get to some of the things that need to be improved, and it would be great if we could then have some conversation in the chat around that.
Then we get to delivering the work, which simply means consistently delivering what we promised. Why is that consistency – delivering against what we promised in the way we market our business – so important?
The reason is that if it’s missing, it results in rework: if you’re in a service-based business, you need to redo the work. It may also result in refunds being issued, whether you’re in a service-based or a product-based business. Ultimately, it influences referrals, and referrals are often the lifeblood of smaller businesses.
So consistency in how you deliver the work is really important. The next component is having a repeatable process as much as possible. Every business delivers against the work it brings in, and whether it’s a service business or a product business that builds or ships products, there are certain aspects that can be made more efficient and streamlined from a waste perspective.
Where are you wasting time, money and resources in the daily operation of your business? Lastly, there’s knowing the cost drivers. If you don’t know what a particular type of job, service or product costs you to deliver, it is really hard to build a sustainable, profitable business.
So you have to understand the cost drivers that underpin each and every deliverable. As small business owners, there’s so much on our plate that it’s sometimes really hard to keep a finger on the pulse.
But ultimately, and it comes back to pricing, it’s important that you know where your profitability is coming from across the board. Certain products may be making up more of your revenue but actually contribute little to the profit that ultimately lands in your bank account – or rather, what’s left in your bank account.
The last component is running the business. Here, I focus the three aspects on key things that are important for small businesses. The first one is your payment terms and actually getting paid on time.
You can generate the business, and you can deliver the business, but if that money doesn’t land in your bank account, it may cost your business dearly. The next thing is looking at your business administration processes, which include your invoicing, and considering whether those things are optimised and streamlined, or whether they only happen when you have time.
If you issue an invoice two weeks late because you couldn’t get to it, your payment window in line with your payment terms moves out by two weeks. That could make a genuine difference to whether you can pay bills and whether you can pay the people who work with you.
The last component is something that, as business owners, I think we sometimes don’t stop long enough to ask, and that is: does the business actually pay me fairly? If that part of the equation doesn’t work, then in the long run, it’s not going to make sense for you to keep running the business.
So that’s an important point, and it comes down to the pricing dimensions I’ve mentioned in each of the other areas. As I’ve gone through this, what are the one or two things that you believe need the most improvement? For those of you who have a view on this, it would be lovely if you could put it in the chat to give me a sense of where you find yourselves.
[Name unclear] says that it’s processes for her. Processes are one of those things that, if you define them, is typically something you can get somebody to help you with. I see Gideon is talking about leads – that’s also usually a key priority from a small business perspective.
Let me move on to the next section. Once you know where you’re at, the next question becomes: where do you want to go? What is your ambition for your business?
Sometimes, when there’s so much change in the market, we have a sense of hunkering down and focusing just on what works. That’s why it’s so useful to take a step back and ask, “Where do I actually want to go?” But more than that: what would it take to get there?
Typically, I use a three-level conversation prompt with business owners to help them think through what’s possible from a growth perspective. The first level of growth is growing what you have. I call it organic growth: you believe there’s still fundamentally some potential in what you offer, and you’re going to double down and do more of it, better – improving the process and doing it faster.
“More, better, faster” is really what the bottom level of growth ambition entails. You’re looking at the existing customer segments you’re serving and the existing products and services you’re currently offering. Oftentimes, if the market still provides opportunity, that’s a very sound approach.
But the reality is that it has a cap. The next level of growth is where you take something you currently have that’s working and combine it with something that’s new. That’s what I call adjacent growth.
There are typically two executions of this. One is where you take your existing products and services and market them to a new or different customer segment that may also be interested in them.
The other is where you say, “I’ve got a loyal customer base or a loyal target segment who know what I offer. How else can I serve them?” What other products and services can you offer them that will help you grow the revenue you’re getting from this customer segment?
The last level is changing the rules of the game. This is if you’re saying, “I have a big ambition. I want to double the revenue, triple the revenue, 10x the revenue.” Whatever that ambition is, you know the existing way you’re running the business isn’t going to cut it.
That’s why I call it changing the rules of the game. We really need to rethink how you serve your customers, how your business actually operates at a core level and, basically, how you make money – what problem you’re solving and how you solve it.
So those are the three levels of growth. For those of you who are active in the chat, let me know which of these are resonating. Bear in mind that oftentimes, it’s not an either/or process – it’s a combination of one, two or three of these approaches.
If you’ve got a successful business that’s making money, you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. You want to make sure you keep what’s working and add on top of that in order to grow your business.
I see Gideon is tempted by changing the rules of the game, but it may come at the expense of the first two. Yes, that is a trade-off. And growing what you have and adding existing and new – I love that.
It takes some time to think through the implications. Gideon talks about the cost and the expense of the first two, and it is a trade-off, especially as a small business. But sometimes there’s a way to get started while you start exploring new frontiers.
Let’s move on, because this is really the key question: what needs to change to take you from where you are right now to where you want to go? I’m not going to ask anybody to put the answer to this in the chat.
Oftentimes, the easy answer is something that’s right in front of you – “I need to be more active on social media to get more leads” or “I need to change my pricing”. That is a version of the answer. But I want to challenge you to sit a little longer with this question and get to the underlying root cause – the real thing that needs to change.
For example, if you say you need to change your pricing, that may be valid. But what does that potentially mean for the problem you’re solving and who you’re solving it for? Ultimately, the market needs to accept the price you’re charging, and they need to be willing to pay.
So maybe the core question is that you need to look a little differently at the problem you’re actually solving or who you’re solving it for. I want to challenge you to take some time this weekend and think this through. Just sit with the discomfort.
Try not to come up with the immediate answer, because sometimes the immediate answer is less helpful than the secondary or tertiary-level answer that comes out. So that’s the plan. It’s quick, but it gives you those three questions and three-by-three dimensions to look at where your business is at.
Let’s get into the next section, where we talk about the resource, which is AI. I want you to imagine that it’s a Monday morning, and there are a couple of capable interns standing at your door who want to come and work for your business for free.
Oftentimes, we think about AI as a tool, but if you think about it as an extremely intelligent intern, it changes the way we think about it. As a small business owner, which is something I am, there are probably two things going through my mind in parallel.
The one is, “I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time to train somebody or think through how to get somebody on board.” However, at the same time, I’m going to think, “What’s the first thing I can get them to help me with?”
I think the statistic is that three out of four business owners in the UK are solo or working in the business on their own. One extra pair of hands, or a couple of tasks being taken off your plate, is going to make a fundamental difference to how you run the business. And that is exactly the opportunity from a small business perspective.
If we go back to the question of what to get them started on, I want to talk you through two dimensions. There are certain tasks that need you, and there are certain tasks you can actually hand over to somebody else – or something else, in the case of AI.
Let’s quickly think through this. There are certain tasks you need to keep because they need you as a human. And there are certain tasks that, if you had a capable resource that was well trained, you could actually hand off – in many instances, those are ideal candidates for you to start working with AI on.
How do you decide? Typically, I look at three dimensions: judgement, consequence and frequency. It sounds a little bit airy-fairy when I say it that way, so let’s talk through what each of those actually means in practice.
Judgement refers to the amount of human judgement required to perform the task. Think about managing a client relationship, determining the pricing for a coaching or consulting engagement, or even pricing a job for a home service business. That requires experience and reading the relationship with a human, and it’s not something you can hand off to a junior resource for starters, let alone to AI.
On the other hand, if there are clear steps that can be followed to perform a task – if you can write down the steps – that’s something you would have been able to hand over to a junior resource or to AI. That’s how we deal with the judgement dimension.
The second component is consequence: what is the consequence if this thing goes wrong? If it’s very costly when it goes wrong, obviously, you’re not going to hand it off to a junior team member or to AI. However, if the cost of it going wrong is lower, and if it’s easy to check the work after it’s done, then it’s a candidate you can hand off to AI quite easily.
The last consideration is frequency. If something only happens once or twice a year, or it’s a one-off, then it doesn’t necessarily make sense to consider handing it off to somebody else. However, if it happens often enough that it makes sense for you to invest the time to train a resource on it, then again, it becomes a candidate for you to hand off.
Let’s look at two examples. A meeting with a high-value client is not something you’re going to easily hand off to AI. I know there are AI interviews and AI customer service in the market, but as a small business owner, maybe that’s not where you want to start, so you’re going to keep that for yourself as a human.
However, there are things like looking through expense claims if you have people working with you, looking at tender documentation if that’s something you do, or generating proposals or quotations. If you have a standard process that you follow to get those done and you can check them, that becomes really important.
I’ve got an example here, but our time is a little pressed, so I’m not going to go through it – the example is on the next slide. Apologies. The next thing to really consider is how to work with AI.
I see a lot of people are working with AI. The question is, how are you setting AI up to be a pair of hands, rather than just working with it in a chat interface? If a new hire starting to work in your business couldn’t get up to speed with the way you brief AI, then AI can’t do the job either.
So how would you brief a human? You would describe the job in detail. You would give them the information they need to do the job well, whether that’s previous examples of how you’ve done it, or your pricing or service information.
You would also give them an example of what good output looks like. If the AI has an example to work towards, a proper description and the information it needs, then it will deliver the work to a standard that looks like you’ve done it – work you can then look at and review before you let it go.
In the example on the next slide, which I won’t go through for time reasons, if you spend 20 minutes on each enquiry that comes in, and you save 10 minutes by doing it through AI, that means you’re saving almost two hours if you have 10 enquiries a week, for example.
Let me go through this to look at candidates for a particular task. If you spend 200 minutes a week and you can save half of that time – 10 minutes per enquiry – by handing it off to AI and then reviewing it before it goes out, you get back 100 minutes every week. That’s almost two hours a week, and it’s nearly a full eight hours a month.
The question is, what can you do with a full extra workday every month? If you put that in the context of your growth plan and what needs to change, this is how the two come together to make sure you can grow in 2027 and use AI to support your growth ambition.
Let me capture all of this together. You will have a plan that looks at where you are, where you want to go and what needs to change. Then you have a resource that you need to train and whose work you need to check.
But if you train it well, it really can become a second pair of hands that frees up some of your time. Then the decision becomes what you do with that extra time, and how you put it to work as part of your growth plan.
So that’s it – 30 minutes goes fast. I want to leave you with this one thing. If you want help putting this to work in 2027, I’m opening up a few spots for business owners to work with me on their growth plan for 2027 and, hands-on, on how to set up their AI to get it right.
You can scan the QR code, and the team has shared a link as well. That brings us to the end of our session today. Thank you for joining – it’s been lovely to be here.
You can also connect with me on the Enterprise Nation platform or on LinkedIn. Thank you so much.
Caitriona: Thank you so much, Marinda, and thank you for your presentation today. Thanks to everyone who joined us – we’ll be sharing the recording and further resources in a follow-up email. Thank you.
Unlock more on-demand sessions designed to help you sharpen your skills, grow your business and stay one step ahead. Find more Lunch and Learn webinars
