The $300 Question

Why Your Knowledge Is Worth More Than You Think

Last week, a consulting firm paid me to explain something their entire "AI transformation team" missed. I was Consulting the Consultants so to speak.

They'd spent six months building faster chatbots. Better prompts. Hotter fire.

They never asked if they were building the wrong stove.

Yes I mean stove, as in the thing you bake bread in.

The Stove Problem Nobody Talks About

Here's what every AI company won't tell you:

Most are in a race to build hotter fire when the real progress happens in better stoves.

OpenAI makes the flames burn brighter. (Productivity Agents)

Anthropic makes them burn cleaner. (Productivity but with an ethical flavor)

But the researchers who understand how heat becomes dinner - we're the ones who actually feed people.

Think about it. In a world where answers cost pennies, questions become currency.

Any MBA with ChatGPT can generate a 40-page strategy document. But who's asking if strategy is even the right framework? Who's questioning whether the document should exist at all?

This is why I charge what I charge. Not because I know more about AI. Because I know which questions make million-dollar differences.

The Shift Everyone's Missing

Process assessment used to be about efficiency. Now it's about existence.

Before AI: "How can we do this faster?" After AI: "Should humans do this at all?"

The consulting firm that hired me was asking the first question. Their competitors were already living in the second. That gap cost them three major clients before they called me.

Here's what they didn't understand: AI doesn't replace thinking. It reveals who was never thinking in the first place.

Your Knowledge Is Worth More Than You Calculate

I built something last night. A simple calculator. Nothing fancy - just boxes and math.

But often, simplicity creates solutions complexity hides.

The goal was to create a tool that shows researchers why they're charging $75 an hour when they should charge $300.

And how much they should charge if they are going to be going into a new field.

Look at that interface. Basic HTML. not even 300 lines of code.

Any developer would laugh at its simplicity. It even gives a nice script to send to clients (or to give to an AI to build an even better one, we can call that a form of meta prompting?)

But here's what happened when I shared it with a biology PhD who consults on lab automation:

"I ran my numbers. It said $275/hour. I laughed. Then I realized - I'm the only person in my city who understands both CRISPR and industrial robotics. Next client? I quoted $250. They didn't blink."

The wild combination of CRISPR and Robotics aside, you can see what I am getting at here.

The Calculator Paradox

We live in an age of infinite complexity, but the tools that change lives are getting simpler, or at the very least create simplicity within complexity.

My “calculator” doesn't use AI. Doesn't need to.

It just asks the right questions in the right order.

Years of research. Depth of expertise. Unique perspectives. Market reality.

But here's where it gets interesting.

If you’ve read my prior articles closely, you’ll notice I’m always teaching two things at once.

There’s the direct message—the ideas, the arguments, the takeaways. But there’s also something subtler: the structure itself.

The way I frame a problem, shift perspective, or layer complexity is meant to model how thinking and workflows evolve in an AI-driven world.

It’s not just what I’m saying, it’s how I’m saying it.

Even if you don’t notice it, the process is exposing you to a new kind of reasoning.

That’s by design.

spoiler: this is one of those situations

Now you take the methods that work, the traditional, the simple, in this case the calculator and you can feed those outputs to AI. Ask it to expand your positioning.

Have it help you you craft your pitch.

Find your differentiators. The calculator gives you clarity. AI gives you articulation.

Simple tools for complex problems. That's the revolution nobody's tracking.

When I train consulting firms, they always want the tactics. "How do we use Claude better? What's the perfect prompt?"

Wrong questions. Here's what matters:

Level 1: Can you use the tool? (Everyone's here)

Level 2: Can you evaluate the output? (Some consultants)

Level 3: Can you question the framework? (Few researchers)

Level 4: Can you redesign the process? (Your superpower)

That biology PhD? She wasn't selling CRISPR knowledge. She was selling the ability to ask: "Why are you automating the wrong process?"

Worth $250/hour (or more) every time.

The number isn't the point. The mindset shift is everything.

When you input your years of experience, your unique perspectives, your lived expertise - something happens. You stop seeing yourself as "just a researcher" and start recognizing what you really are:

A process philosopher in a world drowning in outputs.

The calculator forces you to confront market reality. McKinsey charges $500/hour for MBAs with 2 years experience. You have 10 years studying ethics or machines. Why are you charging less than a personal trainer?

But the real magic happens when you take those numbers and start playing with scenarios...

Let me give you the link to the calculator and give you some case studies on how to use it effectively: