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Wex Advisory

AI Consulting

An AI consultant for small business, without the enterprise price tag

AI consulting for small businesses is hands-on help finding the tasks that waste the most hours, choosing the right tools for them, building the automation, and training your team to run it. Most consultants charge $100 to $300 an hour. I don't sell builds by the hour: the first step, an AI audit, is free, and what I build runs free for 30 days on your real data. Keep it for $1,000 setup and $300 a month.

Get My Free AI Audit →

What This Actually Means

What AI consulting for small businesses actually includes

Most small business owners hear “AI consulting” and picture a team of engineers and a “digital transformation roadmap” nobody reads twice. That's enterprise AI. For a 5-person or 25-person business, it comes down to four things.

  1. 01

    Workflow audit

    I go through how the work gets done today and rank the tasks worth automating by the hours and dollars they cost you. This is the free AI audit.

  2. 02

    Tool selection

    I match tools to the systems you already pay for, so you aren't asked to switch platforms to make the automation work.

  3. 03

    Build and connect

    I build the automation myself and connect it to the email, CRM, books, or scheduling you already use. Most projects take 1 to 4 weeks.

  4. 04

    Team handoff

    Every build ends with a live walkthrough for your team, about an hour, recorded. You keep the recording and a short written guide, so it keeps running without me.

Most work starts with the free AI audit. It doubles as an AI readiness assessment: it scores your business on five dimensions of AI maturity and ranks the workflows worth automating by estimated annual savings. From there, you decide whether to run with it yourself or have me build the top item.

What It Costs

What AI consulting for small businesses costs in 2026

AI consultants sell their time four ways. The middle column is the range other firms publish for small-business work this year. The right column is what I charge.

What AI consulting for small businesses costs in 2026
How it's soldTypical rangeWex Advisory
Audit or readiness assessment$2,000 to $8,000Free, delivered in minutes
Hourly work$100 to $300 an hourBuilds are not sold by the hour. Extra changes are $150 an hour
One fixed-scope project$2,500 to $10,000One fixed price, quoted before work starts, in place of the setup fee
Monthly plan$1,500 to $8,000 a month$300 a month plus $1,000 setup, after a free 30-day trial. Upkeep and up to 2 hours of changes included

Everything I build runs free for 30 days on your real data first, and the price and the day-30 date are in writing on day one. If you keep it, setup is $1,000 (half at signing, half at go-live) and the monthly is $300, covering upkeep and up to 2 hours of changes. Extra hours are $150. The minimum is 3 months, then month to month. A one-off build gets one fixed price, quoted before work starts, in place of the setup fee. See how pricing works.

For a line-by-line breakdown of setup costs, see How much does AI automation setup cost?

Where To Start

Where AI pays back first in a small business

  • Lead follow-up

    Every inquiry gets a reply and a reminder, without someone remembering to send it.

  • Customer intake and scheduling

    Questions answered and appointments booked after hours.

  • Month-end reporting

    The same report, built from your books automatically instead of by hand in a spreadsheet.

  • Quotes and data entry

    Details typed once and carried into every system that needs them.

The payback check

Compare the first-year cost with what it saves. Example: on my plan the first year costs $4,600 ($1,000 setup plus 12 months at $300). If it removes 6 hours a week of work worth $40 an hour, that's about $1,040 a month, or about $12,480 in the first year, so it covers its cost within two months. If the math doesn't work on paper, don't build it.

Before You Hire Anyone

What to check before hiring an AI consultant

  • Ask for the payback period in writing, not a productivity percentage.

  • Start with one small project or a free trial before committing to a monthly contract.

  • Ask what it costs to run each month after they leave.

  • If the deliverable is a slide deck with no first build, keep looking.

These apply to me too. Ask me all four.

Who This Is For

Built for operators, not enterprises

  • Teams of 1–30 people, no dedicated IT or ops hire

  • Spending real hours on follow-ups, reporting, or scheduling that should run itself

  • Losing ground to competitors who are already using AI to move faster

If you're a Fortune 500 company looking for an AI governance program and a 12-person implementation team, I'm not the right fit, and I'll tell you that upfront.

How I Help

Start with a free audit, then a scoped engagement

  • Free AI Audit

    Free · Delivered in minutes

    For when you know you're behind but don't yet know where the highest-ROI opportunity is.

    Get your free audit →

  • Custom AI Automation

    Free for 30 days · Then $1,000 setup + $300/mo

    For when specific tasks (follow-ups, intake, reporting, competitive research) are eating hours every week.

    See what gets automated →

Work is usually scoped to an industry or a team. If you run property management, see AI for property management. If you run a law firm, see AI for law firms. If you sell wholesale and DTC, see AI for ecommerce operations. If the gap is your team rather than your tooling, see AI training for employees.

FAQ

Questions about hiring an AI consultant

How much does an AI consultant cost for a small business?

Most charge $100 to $300 an hour, or $2,500 to $10,000 for a single project. What I build runs free for 30 days on your real data first. If you keep it, it's $1,000 setup and $300 a month, which covers upkeep and up to 2 hours of changes. A one-off build gets one fixed price, quoted before work starts. The audit that shows whether a project is worth doing is free.

What does an AI consultant for a small business actually do?

For a small business, it's less "strategy deck" and more "here's the one workflow eating 6 hours of your week, and here's how to make it disappear." I audit your operations, find the highest-ROI opportunities, and either hand you a report or build the fix myself.

How long before an AI project pays for itself?

Compare the first-year cost with what it saves. On my plan the first year costs $4,600 ($1,000 setup plus 12 months at $300). Removing 6 hours a week of $40-an-hour work saves about $1,040 a month, or about $12,480 a year. If the math doesn't work on paper before the build, I'll tell you not to do it.

Can I just use ChatGPT and skip the consultant?

For writing and research, yes. The bigger savings usually come from connecting your tools to each other, so a lead, an invoice, or a booking moves on its own. A chat window doesn't do that.

Is there a monthly fee?

Yes, if you keep what I build: $300 a month (founding price) after the free 30-day trial. It covers upkeep and up to 2 hours of changes a month, and extra hours are $150. The minimum is 3 months, then month to month.

How is this different from hiring a big consulting firm?

Big firms price for enterprise budgets and enterprise timelines: six-figure engagements, six-month rollouts. Wex Advisory runs a free audit in minutes and automation projects in 1–4 weeks, sized for a business that doesn't have a six-figure AI budget.

Do I need to already know what AI tools I want?

No. Most clients start with "I know I'm behind, I don't know where to start." That's exactly what the free AI Audit is for: it tells you where the money actually is before you spend anything.

What if my industry isn't tech-heavy?

Most of my work is with businesses that aren't tech companies: coworking operators, service firms, retailers. The tasks that eat the most time (follow-ups, reporting, scheduling, intake) look almost identical across industries.

About

Who you'll work with

Max Wexley, founder of Wex Advisory

Hey there,

I'm Max Wexley, the founder of Wex Advisory, based in New York City. I studied at the University of Michigan (class of 2024) and come from a background in finance.

I build AI automation, dashboards and reporting systems for small and mid-sized businesses. I scope, build and support every project personally, so you always talk to the person who built your system.

Max

Max Wexley · How I work · LinkedIn · X

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