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ChatGPT & AI for Consultants: What You Need To Know

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There is a lot of hype and noise right now around AI. And often, this hype is a distraction.

But it’s critical for you to think about how AI will impact your business and industry.

ChatGPT and AI are disrupting many industries — and these technologies will certainly affect the consulting industry.

In this article, we’ll share…

…and more.

Despite what the fearmongers say, AI isn’t about to replace consultants.

But consultants who learn to leverage AI will replace consultants who don’t.

Ready? Let’s dive in…

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What is AI (& Why It’s Relevant To Consultants)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science that focuses on creating machines that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence.

As AI expert Andrew Ng has said, “AI is the new electricity. Just as electricity transformed numerous industries starting 100 years ago, AI is now poised to do the same.”

ChatGPT is a natural language processing tool developed by OpenAI. It is a large language model that uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like text in response to user input.

ChatGPT can be used for a variety of applications, such as customer service, language translation, and content creation.

That text above was not written by me. It was created by ChatGPT.

chatgpt for consultants example

This helps illustrate what AI and ChatGPT can do.

Like a “calculator for words,” ChatGPT answers questions and responds to prompts with text.

Here’s a video that explains how it all works:

ChatGPT is just one player in an industry that is rapidly evolving.

Microsoft, for example, is relaunching its search engine, Bing, to include an AI-powered bot.

By the time I write this, there are hundreds of AI-based tools available (some of which are listed below) — and thousands more to come.

How is all of this relevant to you, the consulting business owner?

Consulting requires human intelligence. Thus, AI will affect the way we’re able to use our intelligence — and enhance the way we do consulting work.

Here are some things to think about with regard to AI and consulting in your particular industry:

  • How it might change your industry
  • What are the dangers
  • What are the opportunities
  • How might these tools change the way you deliver work

I’ll expand on each of these points in the sections below.

Consultants who learn to leverage AI will replace consultants who don’t.

Consultants: Beware Of Misusing AI

Make no mistake: AI and ChatGPT are revolutionary, groundbreaking technologies that will change many industries.

But consultants must be careful when using these tools and ensure that they are using the right tool for the right situation. Nor do you want to become over reliant on using these tools to do your thinking for you.

For example, writing thought leadership content is one of the most effective ways consultants market themselves and get clients.

From articles to books and everything else under the sun, AI opportunists are claiming ChatGPT will do it all.

Many consultants are excited that they can now create this content by typing a few prompts into ChatGPT.

The problem they aren’t seeing — especially when it comes to consulting, where your thinking is your product — is that ChatGPT spits out something that isn’t unique to you.

The output is generated by artificial intelligence, not your unique experience and insights. And there are already AI-based tools (like originality.ai) that can tell if your content is unique or if it was created by AI.

So, if you take content from ChatGPT and publish it as your thinking, remember this: your competitors will do the same.

And you’re robbing yourself of articulating your thought leadership, which, along with direct experience on client projects, is how you become a thought leader.

As Frank Mendoza, a data and analytics consultant in our Clarity Coaching Program says…

“The question is, are you expecting the AI to do something your personal/professional experience should be doing? The AI (specifically chatbots or Large Language Models) can tell a story, but they cannot tell YOUR story. It will always be incumbent on consultants to convey their expertise to potential clients, and I suspect that people will not hire you because of a blog article. A consultant will always be responsible for conveying expertise and personality so that people know, like and trust them.”

Buyers aren’t paying you high fees for your expertise if your expertise is a commodity. If everyone has the same insights, those insights are no longer valuable.

As a consultant, clients seek your unique perspectives and strategic recommendations.

Use ChatGPT to help refine and better articulate your unique perspectives and strategic recommendations. I’ll share some ways how to do that next.

But if you want to be a highly-paid consultant, you must develop unique perspectives and strategic recommendations — not ChatGPT.

How Consultants Benefit From AI (Prompt Examples)

So what is ChatGPT good for?

Here’s a useful question to ask yourself how you might use these tools, courtesy of Frank:

“What are you currently doing that are low-level tasks that AI could help alleviate so that you can focus on more strategic parts of your business?”

To that end, here are three specific prompts consultants can use in ChatGPT:

1. Improving Your Content Readability

Once you write the first draft of an article, paste your draft into ChatGPT with this prompt:

“Rewrite my first draft below at a grade 7/8/9 level.”

Then, ChatGPT will spit out an edited version of your draft.

This is especially useful for consultants who don’t write consistently. Chances are, you’ll write long, complex, hard-to-read sentences in your first drafts.

ChatGPT will help shorten your sentences and remove adverbs as you would do with Hemingway Editor.

You’ll still have to do additional editing yourself. But ChatGPT will do some of the heavy lifting for you.

If you want to be a highly-paid consultant, you must develop unique perspectives and strategic recommendations — not ChatGPT.

2. Writing PowerPoint Slide Copy

After publishing an article, paste it after the following prompt.

“Summarize the article below into 10 one-sentence slides for a PowerPoint presentation.”

ChatGPT will give you a 10-sentence version of your article.

Edit the output. Then, send the copy to a designer to create a carousel-style post on LinkedIn. You can also use Canva to design graphics yourself.

These types of posts are getting a lot of engagement. And this prompt will save you 10-15 minutes per post.

3. Generating Interview Questions

Say you want to interview someone on your podcast as we do with the Consulting Success® Podcast.

You could use the following prompt:

“Based on {NAME} LinkedIn profile pasted below, create 15 interview questions for {NAME}, who is being interviewed on the Consulting Success Podcast, which aims to help independent consultants grow their consulting business.

{PASTE IN LINKEDIN PROFILE}

Then, ChatGPT will give you a list of 15 questions you can ask your guest.

Make sure you read the output and edit them. It will be decent enough to get you started, but you’ll still have to refine the questions and add your own unique angle.

With every task that you’re doing, ask yourself…

“How can ChatGPT help me speed this process up? What prompt could I write that will help me get started?”

Be creative and have fun with it. Try things out. You might come up with prompts that save you several hours per week.

But remember this: no matter what you create with ChatGPT, you must edit and refine what it gives you.

When it comes to content, ChatGPT will help you find that diamond in the rough.

But your readers don’t want a rough diamond.

They want a beautifully polished and cut diamond.

That refined diamond comes from you: editing ChatGPT’s output so that it contains your unique opinion, experience, and insights.

8 Powerful AI Tools For Consultants

There are many powerful AI tools available useful for consulting business owners in particular. Some of these include:

1. ChatGPT

chatgpt

ChatGPT is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to understand your questions and prompts to generate answers based on its language models. From answering questions to editing content — and even writing code — ChatGPT functions like a smart assistant to your consulting business.

2. Fireflies.ai

 

Fireflies.ai automatically records and transcribes your meetings so that you and your clients have easy to read meeting notes. It’s designed to make your meetings more effective and actionable, which is key for consultants who frequently meet with clients or with their team.

3. Timely

Timely is an automatic time-tracking tool that helps you understand how you’re allocating time. It’s especially nice because you don’t have to do anything manually — the tool uses AI to do it for you.

4. Copy.ai

Copy.ai is a content generator that you can use for blog content, website copy, social media content, and more. Simply enter a few prompts, give it some context, choose a tone, and you’ll have a working draft.

5. Lately

Lately is a content repurposing tool for long-form content. For example, if you write a long-form piece of thought leadership, you can use Lately to turn that content into short snippets to distribute on LinkedIn.

6. Tome

Tome is a generative storytelling tool that helps you create compelling presentations and stories. Not only will it help with writing, but it creates AI-based images for your ideas as well.

7. Repurpose

Repurpose is an AI tool that makes it easy to automate your content workflow. For example, you record a podcast episode, and Repurpose will create and post content from that podcast episode to your other social media channels.

8. Legal Robot

Legal Robot provides an automated legal analysis. From detecting risky language to translating legalese into plain English, this tool will be helpful for consultants who are reading and creating contracts.

As Frank says, “Keep in mind that the “AI Wars” are just beginning – there will be more tools than any of us can predict; therefore, it will be critical for you to think about your use cases and find tools that are specifically tailored to meet those objectives.”

Join A Community Of Forward-Thinking Consultants

Think creatively about how you can use AI, ChatGPT, and other technologies to become more efficient and effective in your work.

Be aware of the impact these tools will have on your client’s businesses as well.

But, remember this: buyers of consulting services want experts.

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Don’t get caught in the current wave of hype of people (consultants included) creating all of their content with AI.

Articulate your unique ideas and insights.

Buyers will recognize your uniqueness — and you’ll stand out above those who outsource their thinking to AI.

And finally, think about what can’t be outsourced to AI.

Community. Human connection. Empathy. Real-life, one-on-one interactions.

Clients, whether they admit it or not, are looking for this in addition to your expertise.

Consulting has, and always will be, a relationship business. And AI is no substitute for human relationships.

If you want to join a community of forward-thinking consultants: those who are already using AI in creative ways to better serve themselves and their clients, check out our Clarity Coaching Program.

In our Clarity Coaching program, we’ve helped over 850 consultants to build a more strategic, profitable, and scalable, consulting business. And we’ve helped many of them become leaders of their consulting businesses — growing from independent consultants to consulting firm owners.

We’ll work hands-on with you to develop a strategic plan and then dive deep and work through your ideal client clarity, strategic messaging, consulting offers, fees and pricing, business model optimization, and help you to set up your marketing engine and lead generation system to consistently attract ideal clients.

You’ll learn how to make more money with every project you take on — and how to land more clients than ever before. Learn more about Clarity Coaching and get in touch to talk about your situation and goals.

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