What does an AI consultant actually do, and when you don't need one

The cheapest useful piece of AI consulting I sell is a £400 call. The most expensive is £15,000. The hours don’t explain the gap. What explains it is what you’re left holding once I’ve gone.

That’s the question I’d put to any AI consultant, me included, before you sign anything. Most of what gets sold under the label is one of four kinds of work, and they leave you with very different things.

The four kinds of AI consulting

Strategy. A roadmap, a list of use cases, a deck for the board. It helps when leadership is split on what AI is for. It also dates quickly, because the tools change underneath it. What you hold afterwards is a document.

Training. A workshop or a course for your team. It works when people simply don’t know what the tools can do, and it fades the week everyone goes back to a desk with no system around the new skills. What you hold afterwards is what people remember of it.

Implementation. Someone builds the thing: a project workspace with your context in it, skills, connections to the tools you already use, perhaps an agent on a form. What you hold afterwards is a working system, as long as it was built around your real workflows and handed over properly.

Diagnosis. Someone finds out what’s actually happening with AI in your company, on evidence rather than on what leadership believes, and tells you what to do next and in what order. What you hold afterwards is a report with owners.

Most firms are good at one of these and sell all four. Ask which one they do themselves.

What each costs, using my own fees

I publish my prices, so here’s what the same four kinds of work look like with real numbers. They’re mine, they’re fixed fees in pounds, and each links to the page that says exactly what’s included.

The numbers matter less than the shape. They’re fixed, each one has a list of what’s delivered, and each one credits against whatever you do next. An open-ended hourly engagement gives you no way to tell when it’s finished.

When you don’t need an AI consultant

I’ll tell you when AI isn’t the right answer, so here are the four cases where I’d say save the money.

• You’re one person using AI for yourself. Spend a few weekends with a normal subscription first. Come back when you’ve hit a ceiling you can name.
• Nothing in the business repeats. AI compounds on repeated work. If every task is different each week, there’s nothing to install yet.
• The problem isn’t a tool problem. If delivery is slow because priorities change daily, AI will make that faster too. The 2025 DORA report found AI adoption raising delivery throughput and instability together.
• You want someone to decide for you. A consultant can show you the evidence and the options. Owning the call is still the founder’s job.

Seven questions to ask before you hire one

1. Which of the four kinds of work do you do yourself, and which do you hand off?
2. Is it a fixed fee, and what exactly is delivered?
3. What do I own at the end, and can my team run it without you?
4. Have you used this on your own business? Can you show me?
5. Who does the work: you, or someone I meet after the contract is signed?
6. What would make you tell me not to buy this?
7. What else do you sell that I’d also be buying, such as tools, licences or resale?

The sixth one is the most useful. A consultant who can’t think of a single case where you shouldn’t hire them hasn’t thought about your problem.

My answers to those questions

I’m a CTO first. I’ve spent 25 years in technical leadership, including co-founding Unmind and serving as its CTO through a Series B, then VP Technology at Vault Platform. AI consulting is the part of that I now do for founders and small teams, and the person on the call is the person doing the work. More on my background is here.

I did this on my own business first. I had 11 data stores connected, including Xero, HubSpot, Gmail, Notion and Linear, and I was still pasting between them by hand. So I built a sales agent onto the booking form that drafts the follow-up before I’ve even seen the lead. That’s the shape of what I’d build for you.

I’m based in London and work remotely with clients across the UK and worldwide. If you want to start small, the AI Leverage Call is £400 and 90 minutes, or you can measure the gap between what leadership thinks and what the team does for free first. If you’d rather talk it through, book a 30-minute call. If the honest answer is that you don’t need me yet, I’ll say so.