Top 5 AI Tools Every Business Owner Should Be Using (2026 Edition)

These five AI tools save me tens of thousands of dollars per month in software and payroll costs. In today's video, I'll be sharing them with you. These are all tools that I personally use within my businesses. They help me so much. And if you're currently running any type of business, I think these tools will make a huge impact on how you build and grow your business. Like seriously, I think if you guys incorporate this tech stack, you should probably be able to increase your output by... 10 to 50x. And you'll want to watch the whole video because every single tool I talk about has its own uses. And we'll talk about all the creative ways that you guys can use these tools within your business. So the first tool that I want to talk about is CloudCode. And this is a tool that I think is imperative to every business owner out there right now. Like, I think this is probably one of the most important things that you should be incorporating into your business. So CloudCode is Anthropics AI coding agent, and it basically lives in your terminal. do pretty much everything for you, right? It does way beyond just coding. It can write, debug, and ship entire projects in just minutes. So next to Cloud Code is Cloud Cowork. This is a bit more of a simple way to use Cloud Code, but if you're a little bit more technical, I just recommend using Cloud Code within a platform like VS Code, Antigravity, or even in Terminal. So the biggest thing with Cloud, and this is why it's so crazy, is that it's basically an AI agent. It's literally a person, like a human, and you can describe what you want in plain English, and it's going to plan the implementation. It's actually going to write across different files. It has access to your desktop. It can actually create and edit files. And so it's way beyond ChatGPT. It also has multi-file awareness. And by the way, this stuff might change depending on when you're watching this video. As of right now, it is the new... hottest thing in AI. And founders like me, we're spending so much time learning Cloud Code and figuring out how to actually implement it into our businesses. What I recommend doing is spend one to two days watching a ton of YouTube tutorials on Cloud Code, download something like Antigravity or VS Code, sign up for the pro plan at least for Cloud Code or one of the more expensive ones, and start spinning up multiple AI agents that work on different parts of your business simultaneously. You can create different skills and create different agents. using .md files. So these are markdown files. I don't want to get too technical in this video, but the amount of stuff that you guys can do with cloud code is insane. For example, you can clone an entire website in just a few minutes. It will literally write the code for you. You can tell it different changes that you want, and it's going to do it. You can build custom scripts that pull data from your CRM, generate weekly reports, and then email them to your team. You can create customer facing tools like quote calculators, booking widgets, dashboards. These are all things that you used to have to hire someone to make for you, but you can literally do it and you don't need any coding experience, right? Like I have zero coding experience, but I've been able to make some really cool things using cloud code. If you're not technical at all, I just recommend using the cloud app. You can use cloud code. co-work and just normal cloud within that. If you're a bit more technical and you want to run multiple instances at the same time, you get something like anti-gravity or VS code and then run cloud code within that. Make a bunch of cloud.md files to give cloud permanent context about your business, your brand voice, all your SOPs and stuff like that. And then just start using it within your business. Cloud code is probably the most trendy one on this list, but the next tools I'm talking about are equally as impressive. Okay, tool number two is going to be go high level. And this is basically the platform that I run all of my businesses on. Like I literally cannot imagine not using high level because it is that powerful. Think of it as your AI powered business operating system, right? As your CRM has tons and tons of tools that replaces to actually save a lot of money with my high level subscription. There's different plans. So there's one that's about 100 bucks a month. There's one that's also about 300 bucks a month. But yeah, essentially, I run all my businesses, my agency, my media business, all these different things. on high level and these are all multiple seven figure companies now just a little bit more about high level and what it is i like to view it as an all-in-one crm funnel builder marketing platform and last year they actually introduced a ton of really cool ai features that i think make it a no-brainer for any business owner so for example there's ai employee this is a suite of different ai tools that basically work together inside the platform there's voice ai conversation ai workflow ai content ai funnel ai and also reviews ai now Of course, all leads have their own separate capabilities. But just to give you guys an example, for example, Voice AI. This is basically an AI phone receptionist. So it can answer your inbound calls 24-7, even when you're not working. And it can qualify leads, it collects caller details, it books appointments, sends follow-up texts, all that stuff. What I would do is basically have this. pick up after hours. So when there's not a human available, it's going to actually pick up and you can basically fully customize the voice as well as the script. So it really sounds like your brand or company. I'm not going to talk about all of them, but for example, conversation AI. This is basically like an AI chat agent, which I think every business owner should have. You can deploy this across SMS, across your website, across, let's say, Instagram DMs, Facebook Messenger. I use this extensively and I can basically have conversations with potential clients or buyers. You can pre-qualify leads. It can book appointments directly within the chat. And yeah, this for me is a no-brainer. There's also a lot of really cool AI tools for content. So if you want to use their AI to generate social posts, email, copy, ad copy, blog content, it can do all of that. If you also want to build a website or funnel with high level, it has the AI capabilities to do that. And also before I forget reviews AI, it can automatically respond to every single Google review, for example, in your brand voice. And yeah, I don't want to get too detailed on this. video but i have a bunch of high level tutorials on my channel that you guys can check out for any business owner that wants a really solid crm plus a bunch of other functionality all built into one platform like i said essentially an operating system for your business then i highly highly recommend it if you guys use my link down below to sign up for high level i'll give you my snapshot so these are all the templates all the workflows that i use within my businesses for free and everyone that i get to try high level falls in love with it okay so the third ai tool i use within my business is less of a traditional AI tool, but more of an email marketing tool that has a ton of AI functionality. So if you guys aren't aware, like email marketing, it is the dinosaur in the room. It's old, but it works. so well. And if email isn't a huge part of your business, I definitely think you are missing out on a ton of revenue. So essentially, I use OmniSend to send out a lot of email campaigns within my businesses. And with this, we are able to retain more clients. We're able to find new clients from leads that fill out forms. And essentially, yeah, we're just able to make a lot more money for the business. They have a really big suite that can help you automate content creation, targeting. personalization. And something that I always tell people is that automated emails drive 37% of all email generated sales while only being 2% of email volume. So even though it is super, super boring, the ROI you get from emails is insane. Now OmniSend does have a free plan available. I'll actually have a link down below, but I do recommend scaling to one of their paid plans at some point because you get a lot more functionality as well as a lot more contacts and monthly email sends. One of my favorite things with OmniSend is the email AI so it can basically generate complete branded emails. So we're talking subject lines, preview text, the body copy, all based on whatever campaign goals you have. It can also analyze your website so it knows your brand voice, your fonts, colors, all that stuff. And so what I like to do is I'll use the email AI to draft my campaigns. Then I'll spend about five minutes editing it versus if I spent, let's say, hours writing it from scratch. For those of you that are a bit more technical when it comes to emails, their AI segment builder is insane. For example, you can describe your audience in plain English. For example, customers who bought jeans, but not socks in the last 30 days, or subscribers who haven't opened emails in, let's say, three months. And then their AI is basically going to translate this into really precise targeting criteria and build out these segments for you. Then they can send out targeted offers to these very specific segments that you probably wouldn't love. And this can capture a ton of, you know, what otherwise would have been missed revenue. They also have an AI form builder. So if you want to collect leads by building some type of form, their AI can actually design these forms really, really well. They have also a ton of really great templates and AI can also do optimization testing. So this can increase your submission rates by actually a pretty significant amount through automated display variation testing. So what I recommend you guys doing is if you don't have a dedicated email platform for your business yet, check out OmniSend, right? They have a free tier that you guys can play around with, but essentially you should be sending more emails and more text messages, right? OmniSend can do both of these. And the general rule is the more emails and texts you send in your business, the more money you're going to make. So if you use AI to really optimize the emails and campaigns that you send out, this is going to be a huge, huge ROI for your business. I also have more detailed tutorials about OmniSend on my channel, so I'm going to link those down below. Okay, the next tool that we're talking about is OpenClaw. And OpenClaw is a little bit kind of like Claude Code. And if you've been following AI, you know, it got really, really popular. And essentially what I like to think of it as is it is a 24-7 AI agent. I know entrepreneurs building out really complex open clause systems that essentially run, let's say, their entire marketing department or entire HR department. And the best part is it is a completely free tool. So it is open source, right? It's this open source AI agent that runs on your own server or computer, and it connects to your files, connects to your messaging apps. And it's really not like just a chatbot. It's basically an autonomous agent that can actually do tasks. So it can browse the web, it can manage your files, it can run scripts, it can control browsers, it can send messages, and you can automate a lot of different workflows using OpenClaw. Essentially, what you do is you connect it to a messaging platform. So let's say WhatsApp or Telegram or Slack. And what I like to do with this is my personal AI assistant, right? So I message it like a coworker, but instead of actually telling me things, it just actually does it. Now, the way that I run my OpenClaw is I host it on a VPS. In my opinion, this is the best way to do it. I see a lot of other people, they will go out and buy a Mac mini or a separate computer and run OpenClaw only on it. For me, I think a VPS works a lot better. That's why I use my VPS to run OpenClaw. It runs 24 seven. And overall, I think it's a lot cheaper. I have a link down below to Hostinger. That is the VPS that I use. I just recommend using something like the KVM2 or KVM4 plan. It's really, really affordable. And basically the whole setup for OpenClaw is... extremely easy. They have a one-click Docker template that is made specifically for OpenClaw, and it should take you under five minutes to deploy. Yeah, the reason why you want to have this on a separate computer or VPS is solely for security purposes, right? And I don't recommend intermingling it with your personal computer and stuff like that. It can get a little bit messy. Now, there's a skill system within OpenClaw that's very similar to Cloud Code, and these are basically plugins that give OpenClaw new abilities. For example, it can do email management, It can do calendar coordination. It can do a lot of research on the web and help you with coding. It can do a lot of analysis on data. And it's very, very close to just. having a person sitting at a computer with access to your accounts and files and you just telling them what to do. For example, you could say something like this. Check my competitor's pricing page every Monday and alert me if anything changes. It will literally set a schedule and do this one task every Monday and send you whatever report you want. How I like to use it is I like to have a daily morning brief. So I basically have OpenClaw check my calendar, my emails, and it sends me a summary via Telegram. Now, if you want help setting up OpenClaw, I have a very detailed video on how to actually do it. I'll link that down below in the description. Overall, this is a super, super cool tool. I just recommend having a VPS to run it instead of an actual computer. If you guys use my link to Hostinger, I'll have it down below. Yeah, I just recommend using something like Hostinger VPS to host your OpenClaw. I've compared a bunch of different VPSs. They're really affordable. If you guys use my link down below and also use code Charlie Chang, it's going to give you an additional 10% off to save you guys a bunch of money. Yeah, whatever you guys can... do in clod in clod code you can pretty much do in open clause as well so i want to present this as an alternative if you don't want to you know use clod the main thing is that you should definitely be starting to use these types of ai agents to do things within your business not just plan but also actually execute on things because this is really going to multiply the output of you as well as your current team by so much i know there is a big learning curve to ai agents to open claw to cloud code but investing that time right now is super super important for you guys to do i just hope that this video could at least maybe hold some of you guys accountable to doing that so last tool that we're talking about is just going to be any of the ai platforms like chat gpt normal clod perplexity gemini whatever you want to use everyone knows all these tools and most of you guys are probably already using them, but you should be using them all the time. For example, I essentially have ChatGPT and Claude as my AI chief of staff, as my mentor, as someone that I bounce ideas off of, help plan things, and just give me a lot of really, really good insight. These are all general purpose AI assistants, but for most people, when I see how they're using them, they're only using about 10% of what they can actually do. And instead of just using them as like asking a question and getting some type of answer, I like to use it as a really strategic thinking partner. Like I said, essentially a mentor that knows everything that can look through data instantaneously. And so, for example, one way that I had chat GPT really, really helped me out this year was I broke down my entire business and I essentially told it, how can I monetize better? It gave me some really, really good ideas on. how to monetize my channels, how to structure my overseas recruiting agency, and just really optimize everything. It truly is super smart. And yeah, it's like having a friend that can basically help take your company in the right direction. Another way that I used it was not necessarily for my business, but more for taxes, which of course involves my business. I essentially upload all my bank statements, a bunch of information about revenue, profit and loss statements. And I basically had ChatGPT analyze everything and build me a report. I had so much great insight about where money was leaking from, where I could improve things. It also helps me with my bookkeeping reports. I think every single one of you guys watching this video should be using something like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, whatever it is, as your thinking partner. Use it as a mentor that you actually take advice from. I also use it to help me build... prompts that I plug into other AI things. For example, recently I was using a platform called Hostinger Horizons to basically build me web apps and I wanted to build a mortgage calculator. So instead of just writing some simple prompt, I had ChatGPT build me a super, super detailed prompt on all the features and things I wanted on this website. I just copied and pasted that prompt into Horizons and it built me a really amazing app. I'm not going to talk too much else about what you can use ChatGPT. and claw and stuff like this for. Just know that you can use it for essentially everything. And the amount that you guys are probably using it is probably awesome. It's probably a lot better than the average person, but I encourage you to just try using it more. Have it open on your desktop all the time and always be using it. I truly believe that if you take advantage of AI tools like these in this video, you'll be able to run a much more efficient and optimized business that makes more money with less work so that you can have a much better lifestyle. You can also make all your members a lot more productive if you have them learn these ai tools because yeah there's always going to need to be someone that is running these tools like an actual person and so if you have team members ready that can do that just teach each of them all these things all these tools you can see how there is this gigantic web effect yeah these are five really important ai tools that i think every business owner should be using when you implement all these tools we talked about in this video you should have a really efficient business that is really good at marketing perfect CRM, a lot of AI employee features. There'll be AI agents basically doing a bunch of different tasks simultaneously. And I know learning AI can seem like a bit of a chore and there's also so much stuff to actually learn. But coming from someone that took the time to learn and is constantly still learning, this has paid huge dividends within my business. So I think every one of you guys should make AI one of your top priorities. Links to all the different tools that we talked about in this video are going to be down below in the description. Again, I used all these tools personally myself. That's why I recommend them. Some of those links may be affiliate links, so I will earn a commission if you use them. That's at no additional cost to you and it might even save you guys a bunch of money. But yeah, I do want to say thank you so much in advance. If you guys got any value from this video, make sure to hit that like button and also subscribe for more content just like this. On my channel, I do a ton of videos about entrepreneurship, finance, tutorials. It's all stuff to help you guys live a financially successful life. Thank you for your time and I'll see you in the next video. Peace.

These 5 AI tools have saved me tens of thousands of dollars a month in software and payroll costs, and play a huge role in how I run my businesses efficiently.

In this video, I break down exactly what each tool is, how I use it, and why I think every business owner needs these in their stack right now. We’re talking about tools that can replace entire team members, run your CRM, automate your marketing, write and ship code, and basically 10x to 50x your output.

✅ Resources mentioned:

➡️ Hostinger VPS to run OpenClaw (Exclusive Discount): https://hostinger.com/charlieopenclaw
^Using this link will automatically apply an additional 10% off code at checkout (code CCM10). UPDATE* I actually recommend using the managed OpenClaw plan now (that link takes you directly to it) It's cheaper and much easier to set up (onboarding, set up, telegram/whatsapp setup, and adding API keys)
 
➡️ Get an exclusive 30-day free trial to GoHighLevel when you sign up using my link: https://gohighlevel.com/charlie
^You'll also get my free pre-built snapshot, which includes done-for-you templates and automations, & $15k worth of bonuses. These are the exact templates and AI workflows I use to run my businesses.

Already a HighLevel user? Upgrade with this link to claim all my GHL bonuses:
https://www.gohighlevel.com/297upgrade?affiliate_upgrade_credit_to_$297=startupwise
 
➡️ Get started with Omnisend to set up email automations and start converting subscribers here (use code CHARLIECHANG30 for 30% off your first three months):
https://www.charliechang.com/omnisend/

➡️ My OpenClaw setup guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fNkV9o1_p7oo3WSmv8WH3Rm2K5uoWzFYBmN5GYZjy7U/edit?usp=sharing
 
➡️ Join my free AI Community (templates, workflows, AI news, making money with AI, etc):
https://www.skool.com/ai-os
 
➡️ Get Claude Code/Cowork:
https://www.anthropic.com/
 
► Get access to my FREE side hustle courses:
https://www.sidehustlemastery.com
 
► Join my FREE newsletter:
https://buildabetterbusiness.co/subscribe

I also share some specific ways I’ve used these tools that most people would not even think of, like having AI analyze my financials and tell me where money was leaking, or using it to build detailed prompts that I feed into other AI platforms.

If you’re running a business and you’re not using these yet, you’re leaving a lot on the table.

I hope you guys found this video helpful, and if you did, please share it with a friend or family member who you think could benefit. Also like and subscribe for more videos like this in the future.

Thank you for watching, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day!

– Charlie

#AI #Business #AIAgents
 
Timeline:
0:00 - Intro: 5 AI Tools That Save me Thousands Per Month
0:36 - Tool 1: Claude Code and Cowork
3:24 - Tool 2: GoHighLevel (All-in-One CRM)
6:18 - Tool 3: Omnisend (AI Email Marketing)
9:12 - Tool 4: OpenClaw (Open-Source AI Agent)
13:04 - Tool 5: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini (Thinking Partners)
15:43 - Recap: Building an AI-Powered Business
 
Disclaimer: Some of the links above may be affiliate links, which means that if you click on them, I may receive a small commission. The retailers and financial services companies pay the commission at no cost to you, and this helps support our channel and keep our videos free. Thank you!

In addition, I am not a financial advisor. Charlie Chang does not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. The ideas presented in this video are for entertainment purposes only. Please do your own due diligence before making any financial decisions.

► My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charlie__chang/