Transcription
Today, I'm going to break down three real AI audits we delivered over the past year. One at $500, one at $5,000, and one at $10,000. Same two founders, same method, but wildly different price tags.
Most AI consultants I talked to are stuck charging $500. They are solving small problems and pricing accordingly without realizing that the same method works on problems 20 times larger. My co-founder and I started a Monk AI group at 18 with no fancy credentials and no team beyond the two of us. We have now done audits across startups, mid-market companies, and billion dollar enterprises, including one that uncovered $490,000 in savings.
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In this video, I'm going to walk you through each audit. I will explain what we found, what we delivered, and what made each price tag make sense. By the end, you will learn how to move from $500 to $10,000 using the skills you already have.
Now, let's start with the $500 audit. The client was Steuartly, a startup building software for yacht stewards. They had a single person with a single workflow problem. The chief stew told us inventory checks were taking 5 hours per session, twice per trip. She was managing everything through an Excel file that lived on her laptop. That meant nobody else could access it while she was busy during guest service.
Here is how that actually played out. In practice, a yacht steward would be in the middle of guest service. She would need to check if they had enough champagne. She couldn't access the exact spreadsheet because it was locked on the chief stew's laptop. So, she would text someone and wait. If no one replied quickly, she would make her best guess. The crew compensated using notebooks, sticky notes, and whiteboards.
We ran one discovery call and asked the right questions. We found that the spreadsheet itself wasn't the core issue. The real problem was that data became still the moment someone wrote it down. Their inventory information was always one step behind reality. It was like writing down a weather forecast and checking your notes hours later when conditions have already changed.
We delivered one presentation with a solution road map. We recommended a WhatsApp chat bot that could log inventory checks in real time. The entire project took maybe 10 hours of work and we charged $500. This is the same diagnostic method we use on every audit. The difference here was that we were dealing with one person, one workflow and one specific problem. The scope was small. So the price reflected that. But watch what happens when the scope gets bigger.
Next was a UK exhibition manufacturing company. They had more than 20 employees across eight departments: marketing, sales, project management, workshop, logistics, admin, finance, and HR. This was fundamentally different from the odd startup. Now, we were examining an entire operation, not a single workflow.
We ran discovery calls with every department. We sat in on meetings and watched how information moved [music] between the teams, or more accurately, how it often failed to move at all. We found that codes were taking 10 to 15 working days, sometimes stretching to four or 5 weeks. 50 invoices per week were being manually checked, eating 2 hours a day on invoice processing alone. Meeting writeups were taking two to three hours each. One manager told us directly that departments were working in silos and weren't functioning effectively as [music] a team. The information flow looked like a relay race where no one passed the button. Each runner completes their leg, drops the button on the ground, and the next runner has to find it, pick it up, and figure out which direction to go.
We delivered a full department by department breakdown, a master dashboard concept, specific automations for each team, and an implementation road map with return on investment projections. The work took several weeks because we were embedded with the company. We charged $5,000. The diagnostic approach was the same with Stewardly. The difference was that we were examining eight departments instead of one. This required more discovery calls, more workflows to map, and more problems to identify. The scope expanded significantly, and the price reflected that expansion.
You just saw the same method go from $500 to $5,000 by looking at a bigger operation. This is no coincidence. We have helped over 50 people use this exact approach to hit 10 to $20,000 in their first 90 days. If you want us to show you how, book a call using the link in the description.
Now, let me show you what a $10,000 audit looks like. At this point, you might think the lesson is simply more departments equals more work, which justifies the higher price. That's only partially true, but the real insight came when we worked with IBS. IBS insurance is one of Turkeykey's largest insurance brokerages. When they reached out, they expected the typical consultant experience: AI demos, chatbot prototypes, and polished presentations.
We made one specific request. Instead, we asked them to treat us like new employees, not consultants. With a prepared deck, we really wanted to understand the business from the inside. That single request changed everything. They stopped performing for consultants and started showing us the reality. We spent 45 days embedded with their team across 10 departments. We followed processes from start to finish and watched how information actually moved between people and systems.
One moment made the depths of their problems clear. We asked three different people for the same data and we got three different answers. That's like asking three people in your house what time it is and each of them looking at a different clock. If you can't agree on the time, you can't coordinate anything. Their biggest problems existed before any AI could help. You can't automate a system when the foundation is this inconsistent. Automation would only make the chaos faster. This is exactly what most AI consultants miss. They walk in wanting to sell an automation. We walked in asking why three people gave us three different tenses. That question is worth more than any chatbot demo.
Then we watched someone in the claims department copy data from an email and paste it into the CRM. She then opened a completely different system and manually typed the same information again. It was like an assembly line where every station rebuilds the entire car from scratch. Instead of adding to what the last station finished.
We delivered a complete transformation road map, a layerbylayer breakdown of their systems, team behavior, and AI readiness. We gave them specific solutions for each department. The expected savings we found added up to $498,000. The work took 45 days and we charged $10,000. Diagnostic method was identical to what we used for stewardly. The difference was that we were examining 10 departments over 45 days, identifying problems that affected every corner of the business. The scope expanded dramatically compared to the previous projects and the sakes involved were significantly higher. So the price reflected both of these factors.
Here is what most people get wrong about this. They assume that charging $10,000 requires a bigger team, more credentials, or years of building reputation, but that's not fully accurate. The audit process across all three projects was the same. We asked questions, we mapped workflows, and we found where time and money were leaking. The method didn't change. Only one thing changed: the size of the problem sitting in front of us. Steuartly had one broken workflow affecting one person. The UK company had eight departments losing hours every day. IBS had 10 departments with half a million dollars leading [music] through cracks. The price didn't go up because we got better. The price went up because the problems got better.
And here is what most people in this space won't tell you. Larger companies are often easier to close than small ones. When you frame an audit as something that prevents a half a million dollar failure, 45 days off work sounds reasonable. You are not convincing them to spend money. You are showing them how much they are already losing. Other online business models don't give you this kind of leverage. AI consulting is different. You get paid for the size of the problem you solve. And right now, every serious company has AI problems they don't know how to fix. Demand is exploding, but real operators are scarce. Trustworthy people who actually do this work are hard to find. This is like starting a marketing agency in 2012. The window [music] is wide open.
You don't need a bigger team to charge $10,000. You don't need a decade of experience. And you don't need a technical background or fancy credentials. The hardest skill is understanding how businesses actually operate. If you can do that, the rest is a framework you can learn. If you want to build an AI consulting business using this approach, schedule a call with our team. The link is in the description. We have helped people reach 10 to $20,000 in their first 90 days using this exact model. The audit process stays consistent.