Everyone Is an AI Consultant Now. Here Is How to Spot a Real One.
Overnight, everyone became an AI consultant. OpenAI alone is rolling out a program to certify as many as 300,000 of them this year. That is good for the industry and dangerous for you, because most of that wave sells slides and hype, not results.
If you are going to spend money on AI help, here is how to tell the real ones from the noise.
Red flags: the hype merchants
- They lead with tools, not your problem. If the first conversation is about which model or platform, not about what number you need to move, walk away.
- They promise magic, not metrics. "Transform your business with AI" means nothing. Ask what specific task gets cheaper or faster, and by how much.
- They have never shipped. A deck is not a product. Ask what they have actually built and run in production.
- They cannot explain it simply. Real expertise sounds clear. Jargon usually hides the absence of it.
Green flags: the real ones
- They ask about your business first. Your workflow, your costs, your bottleneck, before any mention of AI.
- They tie everything to a number. Cost per task, hours saved, conversion, response time. They are comfortable being measured.
- They have built things you can see. Real products, real clients, real outcomes, not just opinions.
- They tell you when AI is the wrong tool. The honest ones will talk you out of spending where it does not pay.
The one question that filters almost everyone
Ask: "What is one task in my business you would automate first, and how would we measure if it worked?" A real practitioner answers in plain language with a specific task and a specific metric. A hype merchant gives you a buzzword salad. That single question saves you months and a lot of money.
Why this matters more than ever
AI is now cheap and powerful enough that the bottleneck is no longer the technology, it is the judgment of the person wielding it. The right partner pays for themselves fast. The wrong one burns budget on demos that never ship. Choose for proof, not for hype.
This is exactly how I work: your problem first, a real system built around a number, and AI used as the tool, not the pitch. If you want a partner who is comfortable being measured, let's talk, or see how I work with businesses.