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Welcome to The AI Report – with a special guest, Rob Howard from Innovating with AI.

We invited Rob to talk about one of the most fascinating trends of 2026 – the rise of AI Consulting as a serious career opportunity.

Rob was recently interviewed by reporters at Fortune Magazine for an article headlined “AI engineers are being deployed as consultants and getting paid $900 per hour.” Insane numbers.

What’s even better is that Rob has trained more than 1,200 new AI consultants in the past 18 months, and his students are going from “zero” (minimal tech skills but enthusiastic about AI) to full-time business. And they’re signing Fortune 500 clients and replacing their 9-5 jobs with high-end AI consulting.

Today we’ll hear from Rob on what that means for the careers of the future, and what you can do in 2026 if you want to start taking on AI consulting work too.

Read Time: 5 minutes

TOGETHER WITH INNOVATING WITH AI

Want to become an AI consultant in 2026?

The AI consulting market is about to grow by a factor of 8X – from $6.9 billion today to $54.7 billion in 2032. But how do you turn your AI enthusiasm into marketable skills, clear services and a serious business? Equally important: how do you solve the #1 problem businesses are reporting from their own AI adoption attempts – that far too many businesses see “No ROI from AI?”

Enrollment in The AI Consultancy Project is opening soon – and you’ll only hear about it if you apply for access now.

Rob here – hope you’re having a great holiday season!

I’ve been a fan of AI Report since Day One, so I’m honored to be guest-posting for you today. When I added AI consulting to my business in early 2023 (just a couple months after ChatGPT came out), I was amazed at how much demand and interest there was – it really jumpstarted my software consulting firm (which I’d already been running for 14 years, with $2mm+ annual revenue).

Almost three years later, what’s incredible is that 53% of Americans still say they have heard “nothing” or “a little” about AI. From the perspective of someone who’s subscribed to a daily AI newsletter, that is probably hard to believe. But it reflects the on-the-ground reality when you’re meeting business owners – they are not enthusiasts or experts like you, so they need and want to hire somebody to guide them to AI adoption that really boosts their business.

And that’s the next headline many people have heard of – the MIT study that says “95% of businesses got no ROI from AI.” You probably already know the flaws of that study. But what I focus on with my students is how to solve the “failed AI pilot” problem. In fact, we’ve developed a robust PROOF Process™ that our consulting students use to show ROI to every client within 30 days – and then to build a lifelong relationship that turns into retainers and recurring revenue.

We’re welcoming our next cohort of students into The AI Consultancy Project in a few weeks, and the only way to hear about it is to click here to join the early access list.

To your best year yet,

– Rob Howard
Tech Guy and Head Coach at Innovating with AI

Sources: Pew Research, “AI in Americans’ lives: Awareness, experiences and attitudes” (Sept. 2025). MIT, “The GenAI Divide: STATE OF AI IN BUSINESS 2025.”

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