Case Study of a Stack-Certified AI Consultant

Travis didn't leave the agency because he hated it. He left because he didn't trust where it was going — and because he'd spent five years building advisory skills that when applied to his own business instead of someone else's would let him control his own ceiling.

"I wanted to be in charge of my ceiling. I wanted the autonomy over my work, how and when I work, and have the ability to earn more be in my hands."

He gave a long notice period on the resignation specifically to buy himself the strategic space he'd never had room for at fifty hours a week. He wanted to ideate where he wanted to be in five years and ten years, and to have a thoughtful plan instead of jumping into the next thing.

What he didn't have, when Stack first crossed his path, was a conviction that AI consulting was the answer.

Why He Joined Stack

Travis was honest on the first call. He wasn't sure he wanted to be an AI consultant. What he was sure of was that the skills would compound no matter what he did next, and that the community would change the math on doing the work.

"I knew that the skills there and the community of people who had ambition and were focused on building their own consulting businesses would be something infectious in the best way for me. And the skills — whether I were to go back in the job market and learn to AI-ify my job, or use this in my own business practice — there's no way it was going to be a bad investment."

He was also weighing an alternative: a career coach who could help him transition from agency life to Head of Growth at a single company. He chose Stack because going back into a corporate growth role felt like it would land him in the same place two years later — wanting more ownership and not having a plan to get there.

The accountability piece mattered more than he expected.

"I went from very structured days to now I could be in my pajamas all day. I needed something to be able to do and work towards. It was really clear to me that there's no way it was going to be a bad investment."

Working Through the Playbook

Travis signed up in November and didn't really dive into the Playbook until December. He spent his early weeks on AI foundations — not because he hadn't used chatbots (he had, heavily, in his previous role), but because he didn't actually understand how any of it worked. Fluency around the tools, and how to prompt them well, immediately raised the ceiling on what his existing AI use could do for him.

The bigger surprise came from orchestration. He hadn't heard of half the tools the Playbook introduced. By the time he'd worked through the relevant modules, he'd been invited to both Gumloop University and Lindy University off the back of sessions those teams ran inside Stack.

The other surprise was the sales and service delivery sections at the end. Service delivery was the part of his agency career he thought he had handled. He didn't.

"In the context of being a solo consultant, it's just different than having a full team and a brand and a whatever. It was really helpful to recenter on that and kind of be humbled a little bit — thinking I knew what was going on, but it's always great to learn from people who have done it in this specific context."

The Most Valuable Piece: The Community

When asked what part of Stack mattered most, Travis didn't hesitate.

"I think being in a silo, as much as it's appealing in a lot of ways, being a part of a group is really satisfying. Knowing you're tied to that and you have the ability to get feedback or share, or also support and encourage other people, is rewarding."

The harder part of that answer came next — the specific use case for community that nobody markets on the way in. There are moments, when you've just walked away from a steady paycheck, where the voice in your head asks whether you've made a mistake. Damn, I shouldn't have left my job. What am I doing. What gets you through those moments isn't a curriculum. It's watching other people who were sitting in the same chair six months earlier close their contracts and post their wins.

The proof that it's attainable, that it's realistic, comes from seeing it happen in real time to people you know. Try to find this education on your own and those same doubts arrive without anything to cushion them — and the most likely outcome is that you get discouraged and quietly settle because you're uncertain and nervous. For Travis, the daily reminder that other people on the same road were closing deals was the difference between executing the plan and backing away from it.

The First Client Came From the Certification Demo

The service demo Stack requires you to build to become certified ended up being Travis's lead generation engine.

He built it for someone in his network whose day job had become unmanageable. The agent saved that person roughly ten hours a week immediately. He was so impressed that he shared it at an industry convention, then posted about it on LinkedIn. Someone else in the same industry saw the post and reached out to Travis directly.

That conversation became his first paid engagement — landed two weeks after certification. The initial workstream was $5,000 for about thirty days of work (twenty to thirty hours of his time), followed by a second month at $5,000, then transitioning to $3,500 a month on retainer.

The Service: B2B Prospecting on Autopilot

Travis's elevator pitch is short.

"It's putting your B2B prospecting and outreach on autopilot. Customized, tailored outreach to individuals who are most likely to need your service at the right time — messages that feel very personal, written in your brand voice, that are going to resonate with that prospect and not sound salesy or robotic."

Underneath the pitch is a fairly intricate system. The agent surveils a defined market for intent signals: new job postings that imply demand for his client's services, public announcements about new sites breaking ground, anything that suggests a company is now ready to buy. Each week it surfaces the top five companies most likely to need the service. It then identifies the right roles and individuals inside each company, runs research on those people (recent promotions, tenure, recent posts, location), writes the contact directly into Salesforce, and drafts a multi-touch sequence across LinkedIn and email scheduled over the following months.

When his client's sales rep logs in, he doesn't think about where anyone is in the sequence. He opens his tasks for the day. Touch one is a LinkedIn connection request — the URL is sitting there, populated. He clicks it, sends the request, marks the task done. Day three is an email to the same person, already drafted. He sends it, marks it done. The moment a meaningful reply comes in, the rep flags it and the automation stops.

"This used to be half of his week — just the research and setting it up."

The Numbers

Travis closed his first $5,000 two weeks after certifying. A second one soon after, and then he recently signed his third client — also a B2B prospecting engagement, this time for a mobile app, at $3,500/month. His current monthly recurring revenue sits around $12,000.

From zero in February to $12K MRR by mid-spring. Two and a half months post-certification. He'd already made his investment back — and then some — on the first client alone.

What Comes Next

The next six months are about turning a one-person hustle into something repeatable. Travis has a proposal out this week for a third client; if that closes, he's planning to spend less time on lead generation and more time streamlining his internal operations — building the kind of repeatable structure that lets one consultant serve several clients well.

The 6-to-12-month target is $20K/month. After that, the model gets ambitious.

"I would love to still own the client relationships, own the strategy — be a thought partner — and be able to subcontract the tactical execution."

In other words: the same agency model he just left, but on his own terms.

Being a Domain Expert

We've written before about the profile of consultant Stack works best for: someone with deep domain expertise looking to AI-leverage what they already know. Travis is a slightly different shape — closer to a T-shaped generalist who's seen across systems and companies than a single-vertical specialist.

"My career so far has been a generalist — I do have some domain expertise, but a lot of it is knowing across the company how things operate and who's doing what and why. Having that general business acumen and being exposed to so many startups over the last several years and understanding their pitfalls — it has absolutely helped me into this."

The result is a consulting practice that doesn't sell a single tactic. It sells a holistic operator's view, expressed through automation.

What He'd Tell Someone Considering Stack

"If you want a legitimate way to start a solo consulting business in an accelerated timeline, Stack is a very strong option. The combination of education, community, and tooling — the value is really clear. For me, I made my investment back and then some in one client, which I closed two weeks after certification."

Travis Enos is a Stack Certified AI Consultant building B2B prospecting and outreach automation systems for go-to-market teams. If you're ready to trade a flat ceiling for ownership of your own — with the structure, community, and tooling to actually get there — apply to Stack here.