Years ago I was contracting for a very large company in New Zealand. My job was managing the deployment of website changes to their production servers. The website had cost them twenty million dollars to build and they subcontracted development to several large IT companies.

One afternoon I was sitting in the cubicle opposite the CTO. He was in a meeting with a project manager from one of these external companies. The feature they were discussing was an image map of New Zealand. A picture of the country where visitors could click on different regions and be taken to the relevant local page. The project manager was pitching this as a ten to twenty thousand dollar job. Several weeks of development. A whole team.

I realised, sitting there, that this was a fifteen-minute job. It is a clickable image map. You draw some hotspots over an image and link them to pages.

So while the meeting was still going on I built it. Took about fifteen minutes. When the project manager left I showed it to the CTO, who was obviously delighted.

That experience planted a seed. I could probably make a decent living helping business owners deal with people who make technology sound more difficult and expensive and time-consuming than it actually is.

How the industry inflates cost

Most people do not understand how AI works. They know it is important. They know their competitors are using it. They know they probably should be too. And it all feels scary and technical and mysterious.

That is a perfect setup for someone to come along and reinforce all of those fears. AI is extremely complex. It requires specialist teams. The integration alone will take months. You need a strategy document, a discovery phase, a pilot programme. The bill starts at fifty thousand.

People will cotton on in future. AI is getting powerful enough to develop complex processes without massive teams and budgets. But right now we are in the early stages of adoption and the gap between what things actually cost and what people are being charged is enormous.

What you get when you work with me

I respond to emails almost instantly. I am almost always at work. When we are engaged on a project I am focused on you.

I like people. I enjoy learning about someone else’s business. I get excited about their problems. And I take a personal interest in making sure what I build works for them.

Here is what happens. We meet. We talk. I find out what your problem is, what your business does, where things are at. We scope a solution. And quite often while we are doing that I will spot other things. Maybe you came to me for fresh product images but your site loads slowly, the SEO is outdated, and the product descriptions have not been touched in years. For very little extra effort we can fix all of that at the same time.

Once we agree on scope and price I outline deliverables and milestones. Sometimes payment is stacked per milestone. Each one is a checkpoint where you review what has been built and confirm you are happy before we move on. By the time we go live there are no surprises. You know how everything works because you have been involved at every step.

After launch I do not disappear. I check in on how things are working. I am available for changes and tweaks and updates. I take an active interest in the success of what I have built.

The difference between this and working with an agency is simple. With an agency your project gets buried among a dozen others. It is handled by project managers who do not write code and developers who have never met you. When something takes too long or goes wrong there is nobody specific to hold accountable.

With me you have one point of contact. One person who built it, who understands it, and who has to answer for it.

Five questions to ask any AI consultant

If you are meeting someone for the first time:

What AI tools are you using, and why did you choose them? If they cannot answer clearly or tell you the specifics are not important, be cautious.

What is the monthly running cost going to be and how does that break down? Hosting, database, AI API calls, third-party integrations. It should all be transparent.

Can you show me examples of similar work? Real solutions that real businesses are using.

Can I speak to a previous client? Anyone who has done good work should be happy with this.

Will you give me as much detail as I want about the development process? You are not asking to become a developer. You are asking to understand what you are paying for. If the consultant tells you it is too technical for you to understand, that is a massive red flag.

Red flags

Being told you would not understand the tools they are using. Being told the technology is very complex and that is why it costs so much. Any kind of condescension or patronising tone. And if the consultant is more excited about the solution they are going to build than they are about you and your business and the problem you need solved, something is off.

Going beyond the brief

I edit showreels for actors. Once I have done the initial edit, any future updates are free. That means I sometimes end up doing frequent re-edits as people land new roles. From a pure business perspective this does not always make sense. But I understand the economy actors work in. I understand how critical a showreel is. I would rather help someone succeed than squeeze an extra invoice out of them.

That attitude runs through everything I do. If I spot something that will help your business and it takes me ten minutes, I am not going to write up a scope change and send a bill. I am just going to fix it.

What you are paying for

My pricing is based on what is fair. Fair to me so I can make a living. Fair to the client, proportional to their business and what the solution is worth to them.

I do not think it is right to overcharge a small business. But I also do not undercharge a larger company that can absolutely afford proper expert work. Even if a solution does not take long to develop, you are not paying for my time by the hour. I am not digging a ditch. You are paying for a lifetime of learning and knowledge and experience applied to your specific problem to give you the best possible outcome.

That is a very different model from an agency that quotes two hundred hours at their day rate and stretches the work to fill the estimate.