The Rise of the Strategic AI Specialist

Nobody hired me for AI. That took me a while to figure out. The calls I kept getting didn't ask for chatbots or automation — they asked for outcomes. One week I'm doing deep research for a CEO on a potential acquisition. The next I'm helping an attorney cut through a document avalanche. That's the job.

Nobody hired me for AI.

That took me a while to figure out. When we started offering AI services, I assumed the work would look like what everyone was talking about: chatbots, AI receptionists, lead intake systems, voice agents, marketing automation. We build all of those things. But the calls I kept getting didn't sound like that. They stopped asking for AI. They started asking for outcomes.

They sounded like: "We're in the middle...