Vita Custom Designs owner demonstrates practical AI tools for small businesses

Drew Vid Rasaga, owner and CEO of Vita Custom Designs and Imperial Tech Shop, told a Miami Lakes audience that AI is most valuable when it augments everyday workflows rather than replacing people.

"Use it as a tool. Don't use it to replace. There's nothing like a good set of workers and helpers that can really help," Rasaga said, urging business owners to rely on human review for final decisions. He walked attendees through hands‑on examples: drafting polite customer replies to complaints, step‑by‑step troubleshooting for software, preparing production files so a 3D print or laser run can proceed without manual rework, and batch processing names from Excel into engraved dog tags.

Rasaga described a practical case where AI helped the shop adapt a product to meet a customer's eco‑certification requirements: the company engraved bamboo coasters with embedded NFC tags and provided a written explanation to the certifier about the one unavoidable electronic component. He also said he used a conversational AI to assemble lists of local schools to target outreach — a time‑saving tactic for small vendors that he cautioned must be used responsibly.

On privacy and accuracy, Rasaga recommended explicit caution. "Don't feed personal health information or other proprietary data into public models," he said, advising attendees to turn off model‑training options in personal accounts and to verify AI outputs against source documents.

Organizers scheduled a networking session after the presentation where attendees could follow up in person.