There's a number that came out of MYOB's 2026 Business Monitor this month that's worth sitting with for a second.
MYOB found that 36% of New Zealand SMEs are now using AI in their business, up from 32% a year earlier. Sounds like steady progress. Until you split it by business size. Firms with 20 or more staff are sitting at 64% adoption. Small businesses with one to five staff? Just 30%.
That's not a gap. That's a canyon. And it's getting wider, not narrower.
If you're running a business on your own, or with one or two people, here's the uncomfortable bit: your bigger competitors already made the call. They're automating the boring, repetitive parts of customer contact while you're still doing it all yourself between appointments, jobs, or client sessions. That's not a fair fight, and it's not going to get fairer by ignoring it.
Why Small Businesses Are Behind (and It's Not What You Think)
The easy explanation is that small business owners are slow to adopt new tech, or too busy, or a bit scared of it. That's lazy thinking, and it's wrong.
Xero ran their own research on this earlier in the year and found something more interesting. 61% of NZ SMEs are already using AI tools proactively, and 45% reckon AI could be the biggest opportunity for their business since the internet showed up. So it's not that small business owners don't see the value. They do.
What's actually holding them back is far more practical: no time to figure it out, real concerns about data and privacy, and no clear starting point. You're not reluctant. You're stretched. There's a difference, and it matters, because it means the fix isn't 'try harder to care about AI.' The fix is someone else doing the figuring out for you.
The Twist: Solo Operators Are Actually Ahead
Here's the bit MYOB's data doesn't shout about loud enough. Sole operators, the ones with no staff at all, are adopting AI at a higher rate than small businesses with one to five employees. Same 36% as the national average, well ahead of that 30% figure for small teams.
Why? Because when you're the only person in the business, there's no one to hand the admin to. No junior staff member to answer the phone while you're heads-down with a client. No one covering messages while you're at lunch. When you're solo, you either find a way to cover the gaps yourself, or the gaps cost you money.
Solo operators aren't adopting AI because they're more tech-savvy or more forward-thinking than everyone else. They're adopting it because they have to. And honestly, that's the smarter position to be in. Necessity tends to produce better decisions than enthusiasm does.
What the Gap Actually Costs You
Let's make this concrete. Every hour you're in a treatment, on a job, or heads-down with a client is an hour someone else is trying to reach you. A new enquiry. A booking question. Someone who found you on Instagram and wants to know if you've got space next week.
If they don't hear back fast, they don't wait. They move to the next name on their list. That's not a hypothetical, it's just how people behave when they've got options.
Meanwhile, the bigger operators in your space, the ones with a receptionist, an admin team, or an automated system already running, are answering that same enquiry in minutes. Not because they're better at what they do. Because they've got coverage you don't.
What 'Coverage' Actually Looks Like
They've just made sure three things happen without a human having to be free at that exact moment:
Closing the Gap Doesn't Mean Doing It Yourself
You don't need to learn software, build workflows, or become a tech person. That's the whole idea behind Doris. She answers calls and messages, replies fast, and follows up so nothing disappears into an inbox. You don't build it. You don't manage it. It just runs in the background while you do the job you actually trained for.
The businesses pulling ahead in that MYOB data aren't necessarily smarter or more capable than you. They've just got coverage for the parts of the day you can't be in two places at once. That's a solvable problem, and it doesn't require you to become a tech person to solve it.
The Bottom Line
The AI gap is real, and it's widening. But the data also tells a more useful story than 'small business is falling behind.' It tells you that solo operators, the ones with the least slack in their week, are already leading the way. Not because they had time to spare. Because they didn't.
If you're solo, or close to it, and every enquiry that slips through the cracks is money left on the table, you don't need to catch up to some AI trend. You need someone answering the phone while you're busy doing the work that pays the bills.
That's the gap worth closing first.
Sources: MYOB 2026 Business Monitor, reported via itbrief.co.nz; Xero SME AI research, reported via cfotech.co.nz
Ready to let Doris handle your front desk?
She answers calls, replies to messages, captures enquiries and follows up automatically.
