I’ve built and exited six businesses over the past few decades. I’ve seen plenty of technology trends come and go. But AI is very different from every other business technology shift I’ve lived through. It’s a game-changer for how we do business, but most businesses are implementing AI backwards.
They’re starting with the sexy stuff—the content creation, the chatbots, “vibe coding”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to any of these uses for AI (and I use a lot of them myself), but if you’re billing $300-500 per hour and you’re spending your time on that… you’re focused on the wrong thing.
With AI, the real money is sitting in the operational work you’re doing manually every single week, following the same pattern every time, and taking 3-4 hours to create. These are your actual revenue-generating processes–and those are the ones you should be automating.
Your Capacity Limits Your Revenue
After 40 years in business and technology, I can tell you with certainty: your capacity ceiling isn’t your expertise, your network, or your pricing.
It’s the operational grind of delivering your services over and over again.
You have coaches and consultants who hit an earnings plateau because they’re manually completing the same SWOT analysis, the same capability assessment, the same strategic framework for every single client. They’re turning down projects. They’re waitlisting prospects. Not because they don’t have the expertise, but because they don’t have the hours.
The irony? The work that’s limiting their growth is often the most systematizable work in their business.
Most AI Projects Fail
I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve gotten excited about AI, watched a few YouTube videos, bought a course, maybe even hired a consultant. Three months later, I’ve got a folder full of “promising ideas” and precisely zero hours back in my week.
And that is how I learned what NOT to do. When you try to “AI-ify your entire business,” you end up with:
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- Overwhelming complexity
- No clear success metrics
- Analysis paralysis about which tool to use
- Projects that drag on for months without results
- Shiny object syndrome as new AI tools launch weekly
You can’t start with vague ideas and a big vision. You need a small, focused pilot project that does one thing. Build it, launch it, prove it works. If it does not and give you 2-4 hours back per week within 30 days, move on to another test project.
How to Choose Your First Pilot
If you are serious about operational leverage, here’s how to design your first AI pilot.
Start with brutal honesty about how you spend your time and where it goes.
This means documentation. What are you doing for 3-4 hours this week that you’ve done essentially the same way for dozens of clients? What framework are you applying manually that follows the same structure every time? These are the things you could automate.
Design one small automation and measure it ruthlessly.
Build one workflow. Test it. Refine it. Track exactly how much time it saves you. Examine exactly what the quality looks like compared to your manual version. Identify what breaks and what works.
Decide: Do It Yourself or done-for-You.
Some consultants want to own their systems completely. They have the technical comfort or the team bandwidth to maintain custom AI workflows. For them, learning the tools and building gradually makes sense.
Others are running flat-out. They’re billing $500/hour and every hour spent learning Zapier or debugging a broken automation is $500 they’re not earning. They need it built, tested, documented, and handed to them as a working system.
Neither approach is wrong. But you have to be honest about which one matches your reality.
A Real World Example
I worked with a consultant who uses the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team framework. He was spending hours manually analyzing executive DISC reports and questionnaire responses to prepare for each engagement.
We built a custom GPT that takes all that data and outputs analysis showing team dynamics, alignment gaps, leadership patterns—the exact insights he was extracting manually. Now he runs the data through the system, reviews the output in 20 minutes instead of 4 hours, and shows up to client sessions better prepared than before.
He didn’t AI-ify his entire consulting practice. He automated one repetitive analytical process. That pilot freed up 4 hours per week. Now he’s working on the next one.
That’s how this works. One systematic process at a time. Scale what works.
Where to Start
If you’re reading this and thinking, “I definitely have processes I could automate, but I have no idea which one to tackle first,” that’s exactly the right question.
The answer isn’t the same for everyone. It depends on what takes the most time, what’s most repetitive, what has the highest ROI, and what’s technically feasible to automate given your specific workflows.
When I work with clients, we start with a 90-minute diagnostic to identify one 4-hour weekly win. We look at what’s eating your time, where the patterns are, and which automation will give you the fastest ROI. Then I give you a blueprint for a specific pilot project you can either implement yourself or have built for you.
No long-term commitment. No “transform your entire business” promises. Just clarity on where to start and what to expect.
Here’s what I know after four decades in business: the consultants and coaches who scale beyond their capacity ceiling aren’t the ones with the fanciest AI stack. They’re the ones who systematically reclaim their operational hours, one proven automation at a time. They actively measure progress, success, and failures, adjusting along the way.
If you’re spending 8-15 hours per week on repetitive client deliverables that follow the same framework every time, you could be leaving $100K+ on the table in projects you can’t take on. If you want to break through that capacity ceiling, talk to me about an AI Leverage Strategy Session. It’s $749, can be completed in less than 2 weeks, and you walk away with a Pilot Project Blueprint, Automation Roadmap, and Tool Stack Recommendations.
