Over the last several weeks, I’ve found myself in a familiar place with a number of founders we work with and some as members of this community. The plans are done. The year is underway. Teams are executing.
In today’s crowded marketplace, expertise alone is not enough to stand out. Every competitor has case studies, service offerings, and smart people on staff. What sets the leaders apart from the rest is their ability to translate insight into authority. The firms and executives who become the “go-to” voices in their market are those who consistently share perspective, shape the narrative, and earn the trust of decision-makers at the highest levels.
A room full of members walked into a workshop in Sundance, Utah last month. They weren’t there to learn about AI. They were there to fix their pipelines.
These weren’t founders sitting on the sidelines. They were pioneers. Members of Collective 54 who had already committed to becoming Era 3 AI firms. They didn’t need convincing. They didn’t need a hype session. They wanted help getting started and getting it right.
To drive real results, AI can’t be something you dabble with randomly. It has to attach to re-al friction in your day-to-day work, or it turns into “you tried ChatGPT for a week” and moved on.
We just got back from our first workshop style retreat in Sundance, Utah.
We brought ~30 members together for two days of deep work.
The focus: lead generation and deal management using AI native tools.
After two packed days, one insight kept coming back up.
AI handles the lower value tasks so humans can focus on the higher value work.
In the boutique consulting world, you hire the best minds, wrap them in a methodology, and sell their time as the delivery vehicle for specialized knowledge. At SureStep, we spent 15 years doing exactly that—providing high-level GRC and technical expertise to companies around the world.
Here is something that happened last week. A prospect jumped on a discovery call with a management consulting firm. Before the call, he typed his problem into ChatGPT. In thirty seconds, he had a strategy framework, three potential root causes, and a recommended action plan. It was not perfect. But it was pretty good. And it was free.
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