Fractional AI Consultants charge $5-8k upfront by building SMBs a 'Business Brain'
aryanXmahajan · x · 2026-08-21
Based on peers actively doing this, the author lays out the full playbook for Fractional AI Consultants:
- Pricing: typically $5-8k paid up-front.
- Kickoff: a diagnostic call to understand the business's weaknesses, operations and goals; the engineer assesses the owner's AI knowledge and builds around it.
- Core deliverable, the 'Business Brain': the company on paper—offers, customers, team, processes, rules, past decisions—organized so AI can actually use it. Takes 1-2 days to compile, followed by a walkthrough call teaching the team to handle low-hanging fruit themselves.
- Ongoing: stay somewhat on-call for troubleshooting, and spend a few hours weekly building automations: content creation, sales management/call review, pipeline management, ad creative automation + data reads, customer experience agents.
Key insight: there's a lopsided amount of perceived value—things that look extremely complex to a 51-year-old business owner are pretty basic for a SWE. The author calls this the best side hustle alongside a 9-5.
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