Are You the Handle or the Blade?

Gillette figured out something a long time ago that consultants are going to have to learn very quickly in an AI world. The razor handle is not where the money is made. The money is made in the blades.

Gillette can afford to sell you a razor handle and a few blades for a relatively modest price because the handle is not where the value is. Once those blades wear out, that handle is not particularly useful without new blades. This process repeats over and over again because a person eventually needs new blades to shave effectively.

The handle gets you into the system. The blades create the recurring value.

AI is creating a remarkably similar dynamic in consulting, but I think most consultants have the model backwards.

Most consultants I know are already using AI. They use ChatGPT or another LLM to draft emails, prepare proposals, conduct research, summarize information and help prepare client deliverables. Some are using it extensively and getting very good at it.

That's important. But it isn't much of a competitive advantage.

You bought the handle.

So did everybody else.

The large language model is rapidly becoming the commodity layer. Your client can access essentially the same underlying technology. Your competitors can access it. The 28-year-old consultant down the street can access it. The Big Four can access it.

Being better at prompting the handle isn't going to create much of a moat.

The more interesting question is what you put on the end of it.

That is where I think the consulting business starts to look a lot like the shaving business.

We built STAR around a problem I have seen throughout my career in professional services. A business owner can spend months working with consultants on strategy, finance, operations, sales, marketing, technology and dozens of other issues. They can generate hundreds of pages of analysis and walk away with a long list of things they could do.

But a business owner doesn't need another 47 things to think about.

They need to know the three or four things that matter most right now.

STAR is designed to compress work that historically could have taken months into days and answer a much more consequential question: Given everything we know about this company, what are the few things the owner should work on this year to maximize outcomes and enterprise value?

That is enormously useful.

But it is still only the handle.

The real value starts after the answer.

Suppose STAR identifies three strategic initiatives that could materially increase the value of a client's company. Maybe the business needs to reduce its dependence on the owner. Maybe it needs to turn project revenue into recurring revenue. Maybe its sales process exists almost entirely inside the founder's head.

Knowing those things matters. Executing them matters a lot more.

And this is where I think many consultants are in danger of misunderstanding what AI means for their business.

The instinct is to protect the answer.

If AI can produce the analysis faster, consultants worry that clients will need fewer consulting hours. If an AI system can help determine what a company should do, they assume the consultant's value has been diminished.

I think the opposite can happen.

Give away more of the handle.

Sell the blades.

A business owner who learns in a matter of days that reducing owner dependence could substantially increase the value of the company has not finished a consulting engagement. The owner has discovered why the next consulting engagement matters.

Someone has to redesign responsibilities. Someone has to document processes. Someone has to develop the management team. Someone has to establish the metrics. Someone has to make sure the changes actually happen when everyone gets busy again on Monday morning.

That work doesn't disappear because AI identified the problem faster.

AI accelerates the client to the point where the valuable work begins.

This is particularly important for the small consulting firms I spend a lot of time thinking about. If you run a one-person, five-person or ten-person consulting firm, you probably don't want your future to depend on producing more reports, billing more hours and hoping the phone rings when the next project ends.

You already know what that business feels like. Revenue can be unpredictable. Too much knowledge lives in the founder's head. Utilization and realization always matter. Client emergencies consume time you can't bill. You finish a great project and immediately have to start thinking about where the next one is coming from.

AI shouldn't make you defend that model.

It should give you a reason to replace it.

STAR can help the consultant and business owner identify the few initiatives that matter most. But those initiatives still have to be implemented, measured, adjusted and eventually replaced by the next set of priorities.

That is where the recurring relationship comes from.

The consultant doesn't need to manufacture another problem to justify another engagement. The business changes. The market changes. The strategy changes. The capabilities improve. New constraints appear. Yesterday's priority gets solved and tomorrow's priority takes its place.

The blades wear out.

You replace them.

And the relationship continues because the client continues receiving value, not because the consultant has managed to preserve information the client doesn't have.

That distinction matters.

For decades, professional services firms could build a business around controlling access to expertise. AI is making expertise dramatically more accessible. Trying to make the commodity layer slightly less commoditized is going to become an increasingly difficult way to compete.

The opportunity is to move further down the value chain.

Use AI to get to the answer faster. Use systems to determine what matters. Then use the consultant's experience, relationships, accountability and judgment to help the client actually make the change.

The diagnosis can take days instead of months.

The implementation can become a year-round relationship.

And instead of being terrified that AI will reduce the amount of consulting clients need, you can use AI to expose more quickly where your consulting creates the greatest economic value.