How to choose an AI consultant for your small business

Everybody is an AI consultant now. Some are very good. Some made a slide deck last month. You are about to hand someone access to your business, so the way you choose matters more than the label on their website.

Start by knowing what you want

Before you talk to anyone, write one paragraph: the job you want to stop doing, who does it now, and what finished looks like. If you cannot, use what work to hand to AI first to get there. A consultant cannot fix a goal you have not named.

Nine questions to ask

1. Do you use AI agents on your own work every day? Show me. The best consultants are daily users. They can walk you through their own setup, in plain words, without a script.
2. What will you build first, and how will I see it working? You want one job, a date and something you can check.
3. What will you not automate? A good answer names things to leave with people. If the answer is "everything", leave.
4. Who approves what goes out? The answer should be you or someone you pick. An agent that emails your customers unseen is a risk.
5. What access will you need, and why? The answer should be the minimum for the job.
6. Where does my data go? They should know which model providers are involved and what the data settings mean. Turning off training is not the same as no data leaving your tools.
7. Who runs it after launch? Setup is one thing. Someone has to watch it, fix it and update it.
8. How do you charge, and what is included? See how much AI agents cost for what to expect. Ask whether model usage is included and how you can stop.
9. Can I talk to someone you have done this for? Real clients, real jobs. Be careful with anyone who cannot name any, or who will not say what they did.

Red flags

• Big transformation talk, no first job.
• Results promised before they have seen your work.
• No explanation of what the agent does in plain terms. If you cannot repeat it back, you cannot manage it.
• No approval step.
• Long lock-in before anything works.
• Tool worship. They push one product for every problem.
• Vague pricing. Not publishing a price is fine. Not being able to explain what drives it is not.

Green flags

• They ask about your day first.
• They start small and tell you what to skip.
• They show their own workflow.
• They write the brief with you.
• They make the review easy for you.
• They explain what happens when something breaks.

What a good first engagement looks like

1. A call. Thirty minutes. You describe the job and they ask questions.
2. One scoped job with a clear finished state.
3. A short build. Brief, access, tests.
4. A trial with your review. You see the output before it goes out.
5. A decision. Keep it, change it, or stop.

If a consultant cannot fit this into a few weeks, ask why.

How we do it at SupaKid Studios

SupaKid Studios was founded by Tomi, who believes founders are going to be effectively superhuman, and that work that used to need much larger teams can be done by a very small number of people with AI. He has worked with AI for years and worked in tech before AI became part of his workflow. We say plainly that we are a team of both humans and agents.

Here is how we work. You can hire one agent or a full team: an iOS app, sales and marketing, or day-to-day operations. Our studio team sets up, runs and manages the agents. AI is included. The client approves anything that goes out. Billing is monthly or hourly by invoice. We start with a 30-minute call.

Some examples of what that looks like. Blockwise is a small accounting firm run by two brothers. They had let their bookkeeper go and were categorizing transactions by hand, so we showed them how to hand their QuickBooks bank feed to an AI bookkeeping agent. SkipHold is a white-label AI communications platform. They wanted their team building with AI, so we plugged them into AI development and software factories: agents that build, test and ship code. See how that looks for operations in AI agents for business operations, or the overall managed AI agent team.

Measure us the same way you would measure anyone else: ask the nine questions above.

Before you sign anything

• Ask for the scope in writing: the job, the finished state, who approves.
• Ask what you own at the end, including prompts, workflows and accounts.
• Ask how to pause or stop.
• Keep your own admin access to your tools.

If you want to test us against this list, book a 30-minute call with SupaKid Studios. Bring the job and the questions, and we will answer them straight.