If you sell high-stakes advice, you are standing in a quiet war right now. On one side, you have AI, fast and tireless. It cleans data, drafts reports, and stitches together insights in minutes. On the other side, you have the only thing that earns your premium fee. Your judgment under pressure.

The danger is not that AI will replace you. The danger is that you will let it practice for you until your own knowledge evaporates and judgment goes soft.

A few months ago, it shocked me when it happened to me. I went on a sales call with a prospect who was so grateful for all the support I'd given her on LinkedIn. I couldn't even remember what I posted at all, like, that morning. Let alone how I interacted with her content last week.

That's when I realized I actually knew nothing of her work and background because AI had done most of the work for me commenting on her posts, respond to comments, and even sharing her content.

For one, I felt like a fake. Not a reputation, I'd like to have. ...

In 2023 and 2024, boutique consultants could still get paid to explain what a prompt is. In 2025, that window closed.

Executives stopped being impressed by the tool and began to judge the operator. ChatGPT moved from a shiny object to boring infrastructure. The buyers who sign serious checks now assume you can use it. Competence is the floor, not the fee.

Remember web community managers in 2002? These were among the best-paying jobs back then. By the time I organized a Web Managers Roundtable at The World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC, it was already entry-level. It did not die. It got renamed, sliced up, and buried inside other titles. It's the job of volunteers or virtual assistants in free Facebook groups and forums like Slack, Discord, Substack, Circle, or Skool.

ChatGPT-related expertise is facing the same journey into oblivion. Here's why:

1. AI moved from “toy” to the default operating system for knowledge work

Things that matter here:

• ChatGPT hits 700M, then 800M
...

Information is dead. Not dying. Dead. AI now writes faster, analyzes cleaner, and finds patterns that used to take consultants days or weeks. The slide deck you once sold as a deliverable for your $25,000 discovery? A prompt can generate it in 25 seconds.

AI doesn’t just speed up what humans did; it changes what counts as work. It writes faster than any copywriter, builds decks in seconds, and analyzes data without fatigue or bias. It makes “knowing” a commodity.

That means your old selling point, knowing more than your client, is gone. Consultants once sold access to information. You gathered insights from interviews, audits, or benchmarks. Then you packaged them as frameworks and slides that looked exclusive. The client paid because they couldn’t see the whole picture without you.

Now, that picture is generated instantly. AI can produce a polished deck, complete with visual patterns, recommendations, and action plans, before your client even books a discovery call.

So what’s left...

A Battle Cry for Original Intelligence

Most companies are not getting the return they expected from AI. A recent report from MIT noted that 95 percent of organizations see no measurable ROI from their generative AI investments.

Here is why. The race for efficiency has left many firms drowning in sameness. Generative AI is a machine for conformity. Generative models predict the next most probable token. GPT doesn’t think. It averages. It predicts the next likely word based on what most people would write, believe, or do. They complete groupthink patterns. They do not create intent. They do not hold a point of view. When teams feed the same models the same prompts, outputs converge. Convergence produces polished sameness. Polished sameness feels safe. It does not win.

True value comes from outsiders who resist groupthink and push beyond the idea space. Einstein rewrote physics from a patent desk, not a committee. Curie refined radium in a shed, not a boardroom. Tesla worked alone whil...

Everyone’s shouting that AI will either “replace” us or “empower” us. That kind of thinking shows a lack of original thought. The issue isn’t whether AI is coming for boutique consultants, because it is. The real issue is that many boutique consultants see AI as just a tool. They don't view it as a partner in transformation.

Clients have realized that ChatGPT can handle 80% of the work that consultants used to charge $15K for. And when it comes to getting help fast and free, they would rather do it themselves. It's easier and faster to put a prompt into AI than to send you an email.

Microsoft’s recent Work Trend Index showed what most consultants are still denying.

Generative AI is taking on full work tasks across many industries and showing real success. That’s not a prediction. This is happening now. Your clients draft go-to-market plans with a single prompt. They generate SWOT analyses, persona decks, and training outlines in seconds.

Microsoft analyzed 200,000 U.S.-based Copilo...