Froilan has been writing software for more than 10 years. Michelle will tell you she has never had any real technology skills.
They are building AI consultancies in the same program, at the same time, because The AI Consultancy Project isn’t just a single path.
Inside the curriculum are 9 unique “Consultant Personas” with unique advice and sequencing – so you can choose the one that’s perfect for you, based on your starting point in terms of both business and tech experience.
That means it works for everyone – proven across 1,400+ students ranging from pure tech newbies all the way up to seasoned engineers.
(When you join, you get a 2-minute quiz to find which persona fits you.)
Here’s what the path to a thriving consultancy looks like from three very different technical starting points.
Michelle took the "Consultant Persona" path we created for students with minimal tech experience.
Starting with no tech background at all: Thiago and Michelle
Thiago left a corporate job burnt out, after a restructure and then a merger, with no technology background of any kind:
“As somebody not from the tech industry or with any kind of tech background, I had a lot of hesitation and imposter syndrome.”
His persona is “Producer.” His first invoice was $150, a consult and a mini-training for a friend, and he says it flipped the switch from “I’m studying” to “I’m in business.” After that: a $7,000 automation build, then a $5,000 training package for a client who flew him to New York to deliver it, then $15,000 in follow-on bootcamps across three cities. He now teaches AI strategy to MBA alumni at IE Business School in Madrid and just started teaching a course at University of Miami.
Michelle is an industrial-organizational psychologist with 25 years behind her:
“I’m not a technologist, I’m a psychologist, and while I have been working with tech teams all throughout my career, I’m not really well schooled in all of that.”
She’s an “Investor” persona: deep business and consulting experience, no technical depth. You saw her numbers this morning. What she didn’t expect was how quickly the technical side closed:
“I thought that the learning curve would be a lot steeper and longer, but I was able to get in there and [immediately] start building things, which was really cool.”
Starting in the middle: Dan, Pete and Kathleen
Dan was a customer success manager who had been playing with ChatGPT as a hobby since 2023. Comfortable with the tools, not an engineer, and he’d never run a business. He’s a “Creator” persona, and you got his whole story on Thursday.
What actually moved him wasn’t a technical breakthrough. It was doing the lessons in the order they come in:
“I did not watch his videos in the order that I was supposed to… so once I actually learned, okay, maybe I should start watching his videos and doing the things that he says in the order that he says, that’s when I started actually gaining momentum and I started talking to people.”
The skill he was missing was writing a proposal. His first one was a hard no, and he can tell you exactly what he changed:
“I learned my lesson from the first one. So I came back to her. I had a much better proposal. It was organized better, it was easier. I didn’t overstep my bounds… So I started small instead of going, I’m gonna change your world.”
Pete, who also sits in the middle of the tech-skill spectrum, describes his starting point:
“I’m a ‘Strategist’ [persona]. And what that means is I am a little bit businessy and a little bit technical. But at the same time, I’m creative in nature too.”
He didn’t wait until he’d finished everything:
“After I watched maybe a third of the videos… I felt this sense of comfort. I could go out there and be an AI consultant. And that’s what I did. I started with my warm network. I told everyone on LinkedIn, not all at once, just single one-on-one notes, that I’m now an AI consultant.”
And here’s the part he says gives him an edge over the other AI consultants in his city:
“I [am even] able to share some of my proposals with the [IWAI] team to get feedback before I send it to the client. So that’s a really good thing to have in my hip pocket, knowing that my proposal is the best it can be before I send it.”
Pete does AI consulting full time now, with ongoing training work across real estate firms in Portland and a continuing-education provider relationship with a title company.
Starting at the top of the technical scale: Jo and Froilan
Jo is an AI engineer and data scientist, working in the field full time. The Inventor persona. Here is why he enrolled, in his own words:
“I had, self-avowed, zero business knowledge. I had a lot of technical knowledge… but I had no familiarity with how to start my own business, how to start my own consulting work, how to source that work, how to structure selling all that. I was starting basically from as zero as you can get.”
Froilan has been a software developer for over a decade. He’s an Engineer:
“On the tech side, I felt very confident. But what I am missing is that business side. And what the program kind of spoke to me was seeing how I can take the skill sets that I have and being able to pick up those extra skills that I don’t currently have.”
His first sale was $100 for a two-hour intro-to-AI session.
A software engineer of 10 years, charging $100. Read what’s underneath that decision, because it’s the smartest thing in this email:
“AI is a massive kind of industry right now. And what am I consulting, and do I know enough to get in front of somebody and just be like, oh, I’ll be your AI consultant? So I was like, all right, well, I don’t have to do that for this [first sale]. This is just intro to AI, and I can do that… I can explain what AI means… So I was like, alright, that I can do, and that I feel comfortable doing, and I totally feel comfortable charging 100 for two hours.”
He made two calls. Then somebody far down his list messaged him about something unrelated, and he was ready, because he was already moving. That person booked him and started asking what else he’d be offering.
9 paths, built from what 1,400 students actually needed
We didn’t design it this way at the start. The early cohorts told us what they needed, and you are now standing on the shoulders of all that research.
Everyone arrived with different technical skills and different business experience, and we give students a lot: playbooks, toolkits, biweekly coaching calls, a Slack full of working consultants.
To give everyone a personalized path, we split the starting line along the two axes that actually determine what you should do first: technical AI skill and business experience, at three levels each. Three by three is 9. You take a 2-minute quiz during orientation, get your persona, and get a roadmap that tells you what to work on first and, just as usefully, what to leave alone for now.
Pete, on what that fixed:
“the program does a really good job of identifying the process that you need to go through [for] each persona, like step by step: learn this first, learn this second, learn this third… so that is so beneficial, because then you can stop thinking so much about where to put your mind and just work your way through the suggestions for that particular persona.”
And Jo, who’s the most technical person in this email:
“there’s so much material in the program, and knowing what material is gonna be most useful for you… using your persona is extremely valuable for that. I have a tendency to want to dive into the technical stuff, just because it’s what primarily interests me and also is mainly what I’m good at. But having the persona push me in another direction and tell me that, hey, actually, when it comes to what’s gonna have the most immediate and important impact on my growth, it’s not gonna be the technical stuff. That was helpful.”
You don’t have to guess which one you are
The quiz takes 2 minutes and it’s part of orientation, so it’s the first thing you do.
What I can tell you is that the answer is never “you’re not ready yet.” Michelle wasn’t technical. Jo was very technical, and Dan and Pete sat in the middle and worried about both ends. Froilan could build anything and had never pitched a client in his life.
Six people, six starting points, one program that meets each of them where they actually are.
Enrollment closes Friday at 11:59 PM Pacific. All the details, including the three levels of support, are here: