Can one person run a consulting business with AI? What mine costs each month

My AI workforce costs about the same as my train to the office did. Around CHF 200 a month.

The spend, per month, as of October 2026:

• Claude, about CHF 100. The workforce itself, connected to the other apps.
• n8n, CHF 24. The automations.
• Kondo, CHF 28. My LinkedIn inbox.
• Wispr Flow, CHF 15. I talk, it types.
• AuthoredUp, CHF 13. Drafting and analytics.
• Granola, CHF 12. Call notes.
• Calendly, CHF 10. Bookings.

Why I built it

I lost my specialist network when I left the bank, so I built a new one.

I was Head of Technology HR at Credit Suisse, then technology reward at UBS during the integration. If a task came up in a meeting, someone in my team took it and ran with it. No mental load to remember.

Now there is no one to run with things. It is all me.

You do not notice a function until you are it.

In my first month on my own I was the researcher, the strategist, the drafter, the second read at four in the afternoon, the marketer, and the person chasing a proposal that had gone quiet. Not one of those is difficult. All of them together is why a solo practice caps out at the founder's own hours.

What it does

The ones I use most days: an analyst who does the market read; a colleague who argues back rather than agreeing with me, which took some setting up; a drafting team; a brief on every client before I speak to them; and one that coordinates the others, which I called Jeeves, because I was not going to type "assistant" nine hundred times.

It is not a set of tools. Each one has a written brief for what it does and what it must never do, and when one of them gets something wrong, the fix goes into the brief rather than into the moment.

A few of the tedious jobs I no longer do by hand:

• My LinkedIn connections checked against my lead list, so I can see who I have not followed up.
• Every expense filed as the receipt arrives, instead of a shoebox at the end of the quarter.
• Every payment creates the client's record in Notion without me touching it.
• Call notes written and filed on the client's record after every call.

Sales is still the number one priority. Building the automatic infrastructure behind it frees you up to spend more time on it.

Where to start

Open Claude, press the microphone and say this:

"I am going to talk you through every task I did this week that somebody used to do for me in a company, and roughly how long each one took. Then tell me which one to hand over first, and why."

I never type any of this. Speaking is about four times quicker.

For the short list of tools to begin with, read which AI tools a solo advisor actually needs. If you want to see what is possible with the tools you already use, the Systems Analysis is free.