What even *is* an AI Consultant?

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Being a consultant in the AI space is kinda funny.

These days, it seems everyone is an AI consultant. People who have been in the consulting industry for decades, people who don’t have a day of client experience, and everyone in between.

Everyone wants to be an AI consultant because they see the opportunity, but nobody knows exactly what the job means.

It’s like we’re collectively stuck in a cave with a tiny flashlight, trying to figure out where we’re going.

Are you an educator? Are you a builder? Are you just an excuse for your clients to say they “did something with AI” and move on with their lives?

We don’t really know, and yet so many boutique shops in the space persist despite that.

As an industry, we seem to be stuck in a really weird transitional space where we’re figuring out not only exactly what people find a majorly transformative technology actually useful for, but also where the budget and time space required to implement it are.

In that in-between, you’re seeing so much explosive growth, but my take is that those days aren’t long for this world.

The days of the generalist “AI consultant” are numbered, and here’s why:

We’ve seen this cycle before.

Going all the way back to the invention of the steam engine (and probably well before), there have always been specialists willing to facilitate the transition of whatever new shiny technology into the mainstream.

In more recent years, it has happened with the internet, happened with eCommerce, happened with Social Media, happened with the Cloud, happened with Blockchain.

Now it’s AI’s turn.

It starts with the basics. That’s why you have so many starting businesses that just do things like teaching people how to use ChatGPT or Claude or something.

They’re just laying the groundwork and preventing fear of change.

As this hype cycle matures, we’ll start to see more specialists: people who solve a very narrow AI-flavored problem for a very specific person in a very specific setting.

The logical conclusion to this is that, in that world, there is no need for the basics anymore, because AI tools will just be a normal part of working life for everyone.

Which means there is no need for AI consultants for anyone.

And my take is that this day is coming sooner than we all realize.

That you need to learn one very important lesson:

One of the very interesting upsides of running a consultancy for other Data & AI consultants is that you get to know exactly why those consultancies struggle, especially as they try to scale.

And if I’m being honest with you, it’s not because the ones that do scale are more interesting, talented, experienced, knowledgeable, or successful.

It’s literally just because they know what they’re aiming at.

As a boutique consultancy, it may be enough today to just say you are “building data tools to generate actionable insights” or “helping organizations figure out how to use AI”, but tomorrow it’s definitely not going to be.

The space is only getting more crowded, which means positioning matters.

For example, you don’t want to be a healthcare data consultant, you want to be the one data consultant with experience as a healthcare provider that allows you to understand the complexities, nuances and regulations behind data in that industry.

You don’t want to be just another AI consultant, you want to be the one who’s building AI-powered tools that can make Oil & Gas companies safer and more efficient as they drill or survey fields.

Or the one that specializes in fixing the data behind that one platform that keeps breaking on every bank on the planet.

Or the one that understands how to navigate your markets’ specific AI regulations to build tools that save your clients money, time, and effort in the narrow context of their work.

You get the point.

The early days of the AI boom won’t last forever. And if you want to survive the death of the generalist AI consultant, you have to specialize.

You have to find your positioning.

Only then can you effectively scale and find the space that will allow you to grow from a few brute-forced clients to an ongoing, sustainable market that your consultancy can serve over time.

Glad you asked! A few weeks back, I shared this video with you about a recent client that I helped refine his positioning over a series of go-to-market strategy discussions:

In that project, the key thing we discussed was that he had a very detailed background in the marketing data world, and in many ways, he didn’t understand who exactly he was selling to and why.

To combat this, we repeatedly talked about the fact that he had to lean on the things that made him unique in that world in order to be seen as the expert (that he already was) by the people who need marketing data help.

After all, people can’t buy from you what they don’t know you provide.

The point of me telling you all this is that at the end of the day, the key question facing any Data & AI consultancy isn’t what data tool you favor, what LLM they’re an expert at teaching, or anything else.

It’s just 3 things:

And each of those needs to be answered as specifically as possible.

In the video, Jason (my client) and I discuss it pretty heavily, but that process isn’t easy at all. It requires a lot of introspection about what exactly you’re good at, what you enjoy doing, what clients are willing to pay for, among many other topics.

So check out the video above, take a look at this case study where I detail the rest of the journey that he and I went through together, and get in touch if you want to go through the same yourself!

I bet you’ve fucked up at work before, but have you ever fucked up so bad that THE ENTIRE INTERNET THINKS YOUR EMPLOYER IS USING AI TO SELL PIZZA BASED ON THE WEATHER??

Because Tris Burns sure has, and he was kind and brave enough to join me in this week’s episode of This is Fine, the only show where the best Data & AI experts on the planet tell you all about the biggest mistakes of their careers.

In this episode, Tris covers:

Check out the video above, leave a comment to let me know what you think, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for more episodes just like this one!

Also, let me know if you’d like to jump on the hot seat and tell the entire world the story of your most embarrassing career mistakes - it’s very cathartic and educational!

As someone who has spent his entire career in consulting, my favorite part of my job is telling people what I do.

You spend all this time explaining all the nuances of what you do, how data plays into it, why it’s really important to organizations far and wide, and blablablablabla…

And when you’re done, your friends and family inevitably hit you with one of these:

If you’re newer to the consulting world, don’t worry - this is normal. What we do is super hard to understand for the average person, even the ones who really care about us.

It’s not that it’s beyond them or anything, but they just don’t care. So when we explain, it might as well be an alien language.

Which is why, to bring it all full circle with my point about positioning, you need to be crystal clear about what you do and how it impacts the people you want buying from you if you want to scale.

And you need to do so in terms even a 5-year-old could understand.

Last week, I’d told you that this week I was going to cover topics related to hiring your first few employees, but I actually thought the positioning conversation was a little more interesting for this edition, so to make it up to you, next week, next week, I’ll really be doing a deep dive into that topic!

Make sure to join as I touch on all your biggest questions about what you should be considering when you finally reach the point of hiring your first few-time employees, what it means to grow from successful brute-forced consultancy to a real team, how to evolve every piece of your shop in response, and so much more!

If you’ve brute-forced your boutique Data & AI consultancy and feel like you need an external perspective to get unstuck, I’m here to help!

Get in touch to learn more about how I enable Data & AI consultancies to sell, deliver and scale more effectively through my workshops. If you haven’t already, visit my:

And let’s chat more about where you’re struggling with your consultancy!

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

P.S.: A reminder that if you enjoyed this newsletter, you should click the ad below because running a newsletter every week ain’t cheap and the internet company doesn’t take legos as payment 🤣

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