94% of Small Business Owners Expect Growth — AI Is Why

Ninety-four percent of small business owners expect their business to grow in 2026. That ties the all-time high in OnDeck and Ocrolus’s annual cash flow survey, published January 28, 2026 — and it’s happening despite inflation, cash-flow pressure, and a wobbly capital market. The single biggest factor showing up across this year’s data: small business AI adoption is no longer optional. It’s the operating layer behind the optimism.

This isn’t hype. It’s a measurable shift in how small operators run their businesses, and the gap between the owners who have already moved on AI and the ones who haven’t is widening fast.

The confidence numbers behind the headline

The OnDeck/Ocrolus Small Business Cash Flow Trend Report surveyed 468 small businesses with active working capital loans in late December 2025. Ninety-four percent said they expect to grow this year, matching the survey’s record. That’s striking on its own — but the texture matters.

Owners aren’t ignoring the headwinds. The same survey lists inflation (31%) and cash flow (29%) as the top challenges of Q4, and 74% say they now prefer non-bank lenders for working capital because traditional banks are slower or stricter. So this isn’t blind optimism. It’s a confidence built on the assumption that owners can do more with what they have.

That assumption is leaning hard on AI.

Where small businesses are investing in AI

Generative AI use among small firms jumped from roughly 40% in 2024 to 58% in 2025, according to U.S. Chamber of Commerce data summarizing LinkedIn’s 2026 Work Change Report. That’s an 18-point swing in a single year — faster than mobile, faster than e-commerce, faster than most technology shifts small businesses have lived through.

Where is that adoption concentrated? OnDeck’s data is specific:

• 63% of small business AI users are using it for marketing — content, ads, social posts, emails
• 87% of AI users report positive business impact
• 56% of all surveyed small businesses now report using AI in some form

Marketing is the on-ramp. Once owners see hours come back from automating ad copy and social posts, they reach for the next problem: customer intake, scheduling, review responses, basic financial categorization. That’s the path most of our customers walk too. Many start with Content Forge for blog posts and emails, then graduate to an AI employee handling phones or text on a 24/7 schedule.

The marketing-first pattern also explains why the impact numbers are so high. Marketing automation produces visible wins quickly — more leads, lower per-result ad costs, content that would have taken half a day in fifteen minutes. That early ROI funds the next experiment.

The gap between AI adopters and holdouts

Here’s the part that doesn’t show up in the headline.

The 94% growth number is an average. The real divide is between the owners who have integrated AI into how they operate and the ones who haven’t. PwC’s 2026 AI Performance Study — released earlier this month — found that roughly 74% of AI’s economic gains are being captured by just 20% of companies. The leaders aren’t using AI for cost cutting. They’re using it for growth: new products, faster customer response, better targeting.

For Appalachian small businesses, that gap is specifically dangerous because the early adopters tend to be in metro markets with capital and consultants on speed dial. A rural HVAC shop, a small-town diner, or a regional contractor that waits another year is competing against operators who already have AI handling intake, dispatch, and follow-up. The compounding effect is real — every month the leaders learn faster, ship more, and get better at this.

The good news: the tooling has gotten cheaper and easier in the last twelve months. The barrier in 2026 is mostly attention, not budget.

Three steps to join the 94 percent

If you’re an owner who looked at the 94% number and thought “that’s not me yet,” here’s the practical path. None of these require a six-figure consulting engagement.

1. Pick one repetitive task and automate it this month. Not your whole business — one task. The easiest wins for most small operators are the same three: answering the phone after hours, posting consistently to social media, and following up on leads. If your phone goes to voicemail at 5 p.m. and customers go to a competitor, that’s the first problem to solve. Our small business solutions page walks through what each AI employee actually does — Dispatch handles HVAC and plumbing calls, Torque covers auto shops, 86d runs restaurant front-of-house. Pick the one that maps to your business and stop bleeding leads to voicemail.

2. Track one metric for sixty days. AI adoption fails when there’s no scoreboard. Pick something concrete: missed-call rate, average response time on leads, weekly social posts published, after-hours bookings. Write down today’s number. Check it again in sixty days. The 87% positive-impact number from the OnDeck data isn’t magic — it’s what happens when you actually measure.

3. Reinvest the time. This is the step everyone skips. AI gives you hours back. If you immediately fill those hours with more of the same admin work, you’ve replaced one ceiling with another. The owners pulling ahead are using reclaimed hours for growth: visiting key customers, fixing pricing, hiring better, planning expansion. The 94% who expect growth aren’t just buying tools. They’re using the tools to make room for the actual growth work.

Where this is heading

The question for 2026 isn’t whether to adopt AI. It’s whether you adopt at the pace your competitors are. The 94% confidence number is a leading indicator — owners who feel like they have leverage they didn’t have last year. AI is a big part of that leverage.

If you’re not sure where to start, get in touch. We work with small businesses across Appalachia and we’ll tell you honestly whether AI is the right next move for your specific situation, or whether you should fix something else first. Either answer is fine. Drift is what’s expensive.