Podcast Summary: Marketing Against The Grain

Episode: The #1 Job Needed in the AI Era Right Now
Date: September 25, 2025
Hosts: Kipp Bodnar (A), Kieran Flanagan (B)
Producer: HubSpot Media

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the explosive demand for AI consulting in the business world, highlighting how the biggest job opportunity right now isn't coding, but helping companies implement AI. Kipp and Kieran break down how listeners can capitalize on this market gap by starting their own AI consulting business, detailing practical steps, resources, and real-world insights from active AI transformation leaders. The tone is energetic, no-nonsense, and geared toward action for early AI adopters.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why AI Consulting is the #1 Opportunity Right Now

Businesses are rushing to integrate AI but don't know where to begin or lack the in-house expertise ([00:00]).
“If you're watching this show, you're an AI early adopter and you are set up for success to help these businesses.” — Kipp ([01:05])
The AI consulting role is seen as a $100 billion opportunity with minimal competition today.

Four-Step Blueprint for Starting an AI Consulting Agency

1. Define Your Service Offering ([01:32])

Pinpoint what you provide: general AI consulting, AI audits, ChatGPT training, etc.
“You need to decide what that is, get a clear description of it so that people who know nothing about AI can understand what you're going to do to help them.” — Kipp ([01:50])

2. Identify Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) ([02:20])

Nail down the company size, industry, and key contacts (ex. head of marketing at manufacturing companies, 20–200 employees).
Use AI tools (like ChatGPT) to flesh out target traits and outreach strategies.

3. Leverage Prompts to Run Your Business ([03:10])

Kipp introduces a toolkit of 10 AI prompts as a free resource for conducting audits and analyses.
Walkthrough example using a fictitious company “Fresh Harvest Foods”:
- Instant AI-driven executive summary, opportunity assessment, process mapping, ROI forecasting, and a 90-day implementation plan from a single prompt ([04:10]).
- Quote: “This table alone, for a business, somebody would pay thousands of dollars for just this. And it is in a quick prompt.” — Kipp ([05:50])
- Noted: New GPT-5 features allow output customization and easy report export (CSV, PDF, Docs).

4. Acquire Your First Clients ([08:32])

Recommendations: specialize in one acquisition strategy (LinkedIn, YouTube, influencer partnerships, etc.).
Key resource: loopmarketing.com (no login/forms, straight content).
“If you could just pick one basic channel... you are going to be able to get the first handful of clients that you need to test this out.” — Kipp ([09:40])

Real-World Example: Demand for Human-Centric AI Consulting

Alex Lieberman's Experience ([10:50])

“He’s like basically begging people to apply. And what Kieran this tells me is we need more humans than ever in this AI era and we need more humans to help other humans.” — Kipp ([11:00])
Alex’s company (10X Labs) can’t hire fast enough, showing real-time validation of overwhelming demand.

Pent-Up Demand & The Human Role in AI Transformation ([11:01]–[13:32])

Kieran highlights that AI’s promise is not just about code, but about integrating workflows that require systems thinking.
“There’s just not enough humans who know how to do it. The hardest thing isn’t just building AI, it’s figuring out how to integrate AI across things that are actually useful for your business.” — Kieran ([11:40])
Growing Google search volume around AI is a “leading indicator” of business curiosity and pent-up desire for transformation.
“Everybody is trying with this new technology to do more and more. They see new opportunities they would have never considered before, because AI now makes them possible.” — Kipp ([12:22])

The Skillsets Needed

Not just technical; requires people who can identify what to automate, how to integrate AI, and enable users.
“If you can help them go from 0 to 1 in their AI adoption, you can kind of print cash.” — Kieran ([13:46])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Kipp Bodnar ([01:05]):
"If you're watching this show, you're an AI early adopter and you are set up for success to help these businesses."
Kipp Bodnar ([05:50]):
“This table alone, for a business, somebody would pay thousands of dollars for just this. And it is in a quick prompt.”
Kieran Flanagan ([11:40]):
"There’s just not enough humans who know how to do it. The hardest thing isn’t just building AI, it’s figuring out how to integrate AI across things that are actually useful for your business."
Kipp Bodnar ([12:22]):
"Everybody is trying with this new technology to do more and more. They see new opportunities they would have never considered before, because AI now makes them possible."
Kieran Flanagan ([13:46]):
"If you can help them go from 0 to 1 in their AI adoption, you can kind of print cash."
Kipp Bodnar ([14:06]):
"In this era, if you are a smart, curious person, everything is at your disposal to have financial security."

Timestamps to Important Segments

[00:00] — Kipp introduces the counterintuitive demand for AI consulting
[01:32] — Four-step process: Defining and packaging your AI offering
[04:10] — Walkthrough: Using GPT-5 prompts to generate value for clients
[08:32] — Customer acquisition advice and free marketing playbook
[10:50] — Real-world demand: Alex Lieberman and 10X Labs’ hiring struggles
[11:01–13:32] — Human skills required, why AI creates new jobs
[14:06] — Closing thoughts on financial security in the AI era

Summary & Takeaways

The biggest job in the AI era is consulting and enabling business transformation, not just building new AI tools.
Huge market gap: Businesses want to adapt but lack expertise, making this a "print cash" opportunity.
Use clear service definitions, targeted ICPs, AI-powered audit prompts, and focused marketing channels to launch your agency.
The fundamental skill is translating AI’s potential into practical, valuable business workflows—and being the human guiding hand.
Now is the time for curious, action-oriented people to step up and lead in the AI consulting landscape.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Today I'm going to explain to you one of the most counterintuitive things that's happening in the AI world. The thing is that businesses now want to do more than ever before with AI, but they don't know how to do it. And that's creating a massive opportunity for those who do know how to help businesses use AI. Today we're going to break down not just this opportunity, but how to go tackle it and build your own agency to actually run AI transformation for other companies and make a lot of money in the process. All right, first I am going to show you how to set up an AI consulting business from scratch. Then Kieran and I are going to give you some insights and some real world examples around this opportunity. And so when it comes to, to the world of AI, things are changing dramatically and businesses, they need a lot of help. And if you're watching the show, you're an AI early adopter and you are set up for success to help these businesses. And what I want to give you is four basic steps that you can go and do to build a really healthy AI consulting business. The first of those steps are to define what you offer and what you sell. And in this case it's AI consulting, but it might be a more specific version. I'm offering, you know, AI audit services. It might be, I am doing ChatGPT training or cloud training, whatever it is. You need to decide what that is, get a clear description of it so that people who know nothing about AI can understand what you're going to do to help them. The second thing, and a really important step is to understand who your ideal customer profile is, how big is the company, what industry are they in? Who are you targeting? So for example, you might say, hey, I'm going to offer these services to manufacturing companies that are between 20 and 200 employees. And my target is the head of marketing at that manufacturing company because I am doing AI consulting, AI training for marketing use cases. And so that would be, you know, your very basic ICP. And then you could use ChatGPT or what have you to basically build out, you know, what are their preferences, where do they do research, how are they basically to discover you so that you can market to them. That's a whole other show. We're going to assume that if you're watching the show, you know the basics of marketing and you can get a handful of clients through either direct outreach or some marketing efforts. Now the big part for step number three, I'm going to give you everything you need to do this. We're giving you prompts to run this AI consulting business. We've got a great link. You can hit the link in the description below. We're giving you 10amazing prompts for free that would be the foundation of any business like this. So for example, regardless of who your ICP is, one of the things you're probably gonna wanna do is do an AI transformation audit and help that company understand how they need to evolve or transform using AI. So in this case, literally all we're gonna do. I've already done a version of prompt number one here where I've added in a fictitious business, Fresh Harvest Foods, that basically takes that prompt and filled out the information that you would want to fill out for it to actually fully execute. So now that I've put that prompt with the business information, I'm just going to put it right here in my chat GPT using basic GPT5. Depending on what chat GPT you're using, you could try different models, but we're just going to use the baseline version of GPT5. The great thing is super fast. And so here's our audit like literally within seconds for Fresh Harvest Food says Executive summary Key findings High automation potential customer churn risks customer support bottlenecks forecasting gap quick wins Available opportunities such as AI marketing personalization, data entry automation and AI powered chat support are low complexity with immediate roi. So these are things that if you're, you know, work with a client that you can give to them in this executive summary that they can go sell into the rest of their management team that you can then go and help them with. And so it's done process mapping across sales and marketing operations, customer service. What I love about this prompt particularly, it gives you a full AI opportunity assessment. Basically what's the potential, what are the tools you could use to do this, how hard would it be for you to do this and what it thinks it's going to save the client as well as the cost benefit math like this table alone. For a business, somebody would pay thousands of dollars for just this. And it is in a quick prompt. But this table leads you to like an ongoing AI service business that could easily be a hundred thousand dollars a year contract for a potential service offering for one of these companies. Then we've got a prioritization metrics, we got you some quick wins of different things that you can do using HubSpot, using QuickBooks, et cetera. Then we've even got a 90 day implementation roadmap so you can go to the client and say, hey, do you want to do these things? Oh, great, you do. Well, here's how I would get started in the first 90 days. I think the 90 day roadmap is a little thin, so I'd probably go back and ask for some more details. But now what's pretty amazing is that it says it's going to save this company 1.8 to $2 million. So what would they pay you to save that money? I mean, something like 100, $200,000 seems like a great deal, especially considering that you're going to break even within four to six months. And what I love about GPT5, it's always also looking for the next best step to kind of help you keep going and get the answers you're looking for. And so would you want me to build a detailed financial model with cost savings and break even by quarter? So you can just say yes and it will then go and take the next action prompting so you can kind of spend some time with GPT5 and get a really, really robust report. That's pretty awesome. Okay, so it has built me an interactive model here so I could go in and actually just like I would in Excel, change any of these values. This is a sick feature. Actually, it's the first time I've seen this in chat GPT. The fact that you can expand the table, I could download the table as a CSV. So all of this downloads in a CSV that I can do in Excel, which is pretty freaking awesome. And now I can say, can you take this report and audit and give me a version in your Canvas feature that is easy to edit and download? So now here's the kicker. Canvas in ChatGPT is like a word processor like Google Docs, but with AI. So I can now go in here so I can go to edit mode and I can edit anything I want. If I want to change some numbers, add my own thoughts, my own points, all of that I can do. That's sweet. Then I can close Canvas and then once I'm done, I can download it as a PDF or a document. So if you want a PDF to send to a client, you want to put it in Google Docs so you can collaborate with a client. It's super easy. You don't even have to copy and paste. It is remarkable how fast you can put together an awesome output. And this is just one of the ten prompts. You can easily build a really good business with these prompts and with this focus. So I said we were going to get to customer Acquisition and to marketing. When you're running a business like this, you need to have a way to acquire customers. We've got an awesome marketing playbook for you over on HubSpot.com if you go to loopmarketing.com, it's free, no form fills. You can just go through and read everything you'd ever want to know about doing marketing well in the AI era. But it's got some great things like how do you partner with influencers, how do you run personalized email campaigns, how do you use AI to create marketing materials really quickly and easily? How do you start showing up in search results in ChatGPT and Claude? Those are the types of things that if you're starting a business like this that you're going to need to do to get found and get customers. And so I highly Recommend Checking out loopmarketing.com and going into more detail. But if you could just pick one basic channel, maybe it's LinkedIn marketing, maybe it's YouTube videos, maybe it's partnering with influencers. You are going to be able to get the first handful of clients that you need to kind of test this out. So that's it. Four easy steps. Define what the service offering is. Choose your ideal customer profile. Use the 10 free prompts that we're giving you. I walked you through an amazing example. And then go check out loopmarketing.com for everything you need to know about customer acquisition. Look, the important thing for you to understand is that every business out there is scrambling for AI help right now. They're trying to find consultants and services to guide them through this crazy transformation that's happening, but there's still not enough of them yet. I'm talking about a $100 billion market with basically pretty little competition. So we built the one person agency stack. This includes the 10 AI prompts I show you to let you run enterprise level audits, design custom workflows, build training programs that actually work. You can capitalize on this massive opportunity for yourself. So you can get it right now. You can scan the QR code or you can click the link down in the description below. I highly recommend the prompts, they're awesome. So somebody who's already taking this, like, AI transformation business and running with it is Alex Luberman. He had a great post on this and Kieran and I are gonna break it down because it's going to help you in how you think about building your own AI consulting business. Friend of the pod, Alex Lieberman. He had a post on X that I Thought was really interesting. This might go down as one of the most important but somewhat ironic tweets of this AI transformation era. And he's basically like, I can't hire fast enough for my AI transformation company. It's this company called 10X Labs that helps people adopt and transform AI AI. And he's like basically begging people to apply. And what Kieran this tells me is we need more humans than ever in this AI era and we need more humans to help other humans. I've spent a bunch of time talking with folks about AI and they really want some real human handholding. Are you seeing this? Is this something that is just seems like to me a massive opportunity. One, if you're a consultant to provide these services and two, if you're a business and you're not moving as fast in AI as you want, you probably need some of these services.