The Solo Consultant's AI Playbook

For the hours you lose to the work around the work: proposals, kickoff emails, meeting prep, first drafts and case studies.

At $150 to $300 an hour, the hours that pay are the thinking, the advice and the judgment calls. The hours that don’t are everything around them: proposals, kickoff emails, meeting prep, first drafts of deliverables, writing up case studies, and the research before Thursday’s call.

A good share of that surrounding work can go to AI, and some of it can’t. Anything that depends on your taste, your judgment or your client relationship stays with you. The rest can shrink from most of an hour to a few minutes, and this book shows you which is which, chapter by chapter.

What you get

An eight-chapter PDF (about 50 pages, editorially designed) covering:

1. The Operating Model: three categories of consulting work, and the question to ask before you open any AI tool.
2. Lead Research: a pre-call dossier in 90 seconds, and sharper discovery questions.
3. Proposals: discovery call to finished proposal in about 25 minutes (drawn from the Proposal-Closer Prompt Pack).
4. Client Onboarding: the kickoff email, the week-one questions, and the internal note that saves you in week three.
5. Meetings: a five-minute pre-brief, a five-minute debrief from the transcript, and a two-minute follow-up.
6. Deliverable Drafting: where AI helps, where it damages your reputation, and how to work between the two.
7. Case Studies & Newsletters: a case study in about fifteen minutes from your project debrief, plus three posts from the same source.
8. Quarterly Retrospective: reading your pipeline for patterns, refining who you serve, and choosing the one change for next quarter.

Plus:

• Appendix A: every prompt from every chapter, ready to copy, in a separate prompts/ folder.
• Appendix B: a short, opinionated take on Claude versus ChatGPT for this work, plus tool recommendations.
• Bonus: the AI Operator’s Cheatsheet, one printable page that condenses the eight chapters. Print it and keep it by your desk.

Who this is for

Independent consultants, fractional executives and small agencies (1–5 people) with at least ten engagements behind them, who use AI and would like it to save the hours it’s supposed to without becoming a project of its own. If you haven’t done ten engagements yet, the workflows will read as theory, because there’s nothing to map them onto.

Who this isn't for

• First-time consultants. Bookmark it for later.
• Anyone looking for a “how to build an AI agency” book. There are plenty, and this isn’t one.
• Anyone hoping AI will take over the parts of the work that need judgment. It won’t, and this book argues against trying.
• Anyone without live client work to try it on. Every chapter is meant to be run on a real engagement the week you read it.

What it won't do for you

It won’t produce finished deliverables for you. It gets you to a solid first draft much faster. The last stretch is still yours, and it’s the part your clients pay for.

Why Claude-first

We write for Claude first because it pads less and commits to a view on structured tasks like the ones in this book. Every chapter also has a ChatGPT note, and Appendix B covers when to use which.

Format & delivery

• Instant download, one zip.
• Main book: PDF (about 50 pages, editorially designed).
• Bonus: the AI Operator’s Cheatsheet (one printable page).
• Appendix prompts as plain .md files, ready to paste.
• Free updates for life. New versions arrive as fresh download links.

Pairs with

This Playbook covers the whole practice. These go deeper on parts of it:

• Proposal-Closer Prompt Pack ($37). The full version of Chapter 3. If proposals are what slows you down most, the Pack is the more direct fix.
• The Solo Operator's SOP Bundle ($127). Ten written procedures (kickoff, weekly update, invoicing, retro, case study, scope creep and more) that you copy into client folders. Four of them cross-reference Playbook chapters.
• Solo Consultant Starter Bundle ($67). The Playbook and the Prompt Pack in one zip. $17 less than buying them separately.
• The Solo Operator's Mega Bundle ($177). The Playbook, the Pack and the SOP Bundle in one zip. $34 less than buying all three.

FAQ

How is this different from a “100 ChatGPT prompts for consultants” pack?
Those are lists of standalone prompts. This is a book about when to use AI in a consulting practice, when not to, and how the pieces fit together, with the prompts and worked examples inside each chapter. The prompts are also collected in Appendix A, ready to copy.

Do I need Claude to use this?
No. Every prompt works in ChatGPT too.

Is this a course?
No. It’s a book. No videos, no community, nothing live.

Refund policy?
We don’t refund digital products once downloaded. If the book genuinely doesn’t work for your situation, reply to your purchase receipt and we’ll make it right.