Ever since I launched Superposition almost a year ago, I’ve been experimenting with how to talk about the work we Data & AI consultants do. As I’m sure you know, your average consultancy is not exactly…skilled at explaining what they do in any sort of engaging and informative way.

You know what I’m talking about:

The most snooze-inducing stories about their work
Non-stop bragging about overly broad and unapproachable client successes
“Thought leadership” without thoughts or leadership of any kind

All presented with the personality of one of these:

one of those hilariously generic boxes of tissues

This newsletter is my promise to you to talk about what we consultants do in a way that is interesting, approachable, and (most importantly) always focused on bringing you real value and insights, rather than some useless framework you only get if you comment a super-duper-magic word.

But David, what does that actually mean?

Excellent Question!

If you already follow me on LinkedIn, you’ll know that what I share about consulting work is, above all else:

Chaotic and very colorful!

So, expect:

Real stories of the consultancy founders and leaders I work with and how I've helped them sell, grow, and scale (more on this below!)
Behind-the-scenes chaos of building Superposition
No-bullshit, experience-based ideas to adopt AI and Data tools and processes effectively
Exclusive snippets from my game show and other upcoming shows (like the one where I talk to other consultants about the biggest fuck-ups of their career)!
Interviews with consultants in the Data & AI world - especially ones I respect and learn from every day
and most importantly, more obscure memes about consulting work than you’ll know what to do with

First off, what is Superposition?

For those of you who haven’t heard this story, I should tell you how my company came about in 60 seconds:

I’ve spent my entire career in the consulting world, coming up the ranks at Accenture (for about 7 years), while later moving on to progressively smaller boutique analytics consultancies over the next 5 years.
I come from a very data-heavy world, working as a data strategy and visualization expert across every variation of your favorite F500 company (and later expanding into AI strategy as well).
Additionally, I’m also super passionate about design thinking and human-centered design, and the role they can play in making our work as consultants more effective (a story I’ll cover in a future newsletter in much more detail).
In that journey, I’ve pretty much seen and done all the different variations of consulting work, from trying to grow a small but mighty practice to being part of a market-leading advisory team.

So after a layoff in early 2025, I had a brilliant idea: I’m going to combine all those skills and launch a Data & AI strategy consultancy of my own¹ that would focus on building workshops just like this one to build data tools that bring actual value to people and to cut through the nonsense in the AI space:

You’ll be seeing a lot more of these in my newsletter!

What I quickly found out was that my clients only wanted to see the final results of the work that follows these workshops, and to be honest with you:

I was too burned out to provide that to them effectively.

So I decided to pivot into the only thing that made sense: building those workshops for other consultants!

Building a Consultancy for Consultants

As I started building more of those workshops, I realized that the boutique Data or AI consultancies I was helping also faced a massive number of problems internally:

Not understanding who they actually serve
Not knowing what they sell
Not reflecting on why their clients buy
Not planning for a world in which their team needs to scale
Not creating workflows that make sense for a team that is growing faster than they imagined

and that the workshop frameworks I created could be useful to them to help them navigate those issues through guided conversations, where I could use my experience to help them build a strategy that builds a path forward for them.

So I became, in the truest sense, a consultant for other consultants, offering two types of services:

White-labeled workshops for other consultancies to do ideation and discovery sprints with their own clients - particularly with the goal of selling more projects².
Customized coaching services for the founders of those consultancies, to help them scale a consulting firm they’ve previously “brute-forced” into some level of success - working on anything from go-to-market strategies to scaling workflows, building new offerings, pricing models, and hiring roadmaps (among many other issues).

…and the rest is history!

So what does your work look like?

How about I show you rather than tell you:

and if you’re curious to learn more, there’s plenty more examples on my website!

The Meme Team

Like any self-respecting millennial, I love a good meme. I think there’s something about being able to tell a whole story through a funny, super obscure reference, so expect to see a lot more of these every week in this newsletter.

The honor of our first-ever meme comes from the term Actionable Insights.

As a long-time data nerd, I’ve heard this term overused to death. Dashboards, tools, and processes built on the back of making “insights” actionable - but nobody can actually define what either means.

With the continued explosion of AI, we see a lot of the same.

Meaningless terms that nobody can explain, but everyone seemingly uses on a daily basis - especially when we’re selling.

As consultants, our duty to our clients is to be clear and concise in what we can provide them. To both explain clearly what we are capable of building, and to guide them along that process transparently and outside the hype.

Which means talking like a normal person, and not an alien.

You do not produce actionable insights; you make X workflow better by enabling Y metric for Z business purpose.

You do not build AI tools to bring efficiencies to enterprises; you automate process A by introducing tool B into it for stakeholder C.

SO IF YOU’RE BUILDING A CONSULTANCY, YOU NEED TO KNOW: SPECIFICITY ABOVE ALL ELSE.

And if you’re ever thinking of being this vague with your offerings, remember I will find you, and when I do, I’m going to:

Help Me Name my Newsletter

Probably the hardest part of creating literally anything is naming it. I really struggled with naming this newsletter something really clever that combined both the name and spirit of the company with the fact that it’s aimed at other consultants, and honestly, I came up mostly empty.

So I need your help.

Let me know in the comments your best ideas for what to name this newsletter.

Ideally, I’d want the name to be:

Not inappropriate
Funny or clever
Related to the name of my company (Superposition), what I do (consulting other consultants), or just generally be relevant to other consultants
Not boring

I’m all ears for your finest suggestions, and the winner will get a shout-out in a future edition!

What’s Next

Since I don’t want to keep you here forever, this’ll be the end of my first-ever newsletter. Before you go, though, here are a couple of items I want you to know:

Future versions of the newsletter will feature a lot more details about my work, but I also want to hear from you! What else do you want to see more of: Client stories, frameworks, memes, Superposition stories, all of the above?
If you know of any other consultant who might find this newsletter interesting, please share it with them! My goal is to build a community of other great consultants in the Data & AI world - so please share this with anyone you’d like and tell them to subscribe here.
If you’re running a Data & AI consultancy and feeling stuck, I’d love to chat more! Book a time here so we can chat more in detail about the challenges you’re facing and how my workshops can help you and your team sell, scale, and deliver more effectively!

Otherwise, thank you so much for reading, and I’ll see you next week!

1 super original, amirite??

2 especially in a technical space like the Data & AI world, where our clients often have to be educated as much as they have to be sold.

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