People ask this expecting a runaround. Here is the number, then what it buys.
What does an AI workshop cost?
My prices, on the page because that is where they belong:
- AI 101, half day, $1,500. The whole team, plain English, real tools on your real work. Everybody leaves able to use the thing on Monday and nobody is scared of it.
- Applied AI workshop, one day, $3,500. Your team in a room, the work on the wall, on paper. We find where the hours go, rank the ideas, and decide one thing before you leave.
- Workshop plus the maps, two days, $6,500. Everything above, plus I come back with maps of your key processes, the hand-offs, and a crawl, walk, run plan by department.
Nationally, custom workshop delivery runs about $1,500 to $4,000 per day, and consultants who do this by the hour charge $150 to $350. So the day rate is in the normal range. What is unusual is the two-day price including the maps, which most people charge separately for.
What do you actually get out of it?
A ranked list and one decision. That sounds small until you have sat through a $20,000 "AI strategy" that produced a deck nobody opened. The day is built on a service design method I learned at the Cooper School and ran for BMW: everybody's work goes on the wall, everybody puts dots on the pain, and the room scores each idea on how much it would help versus how hard it would be. The top of that list is your plan. The bottom is a list of things you now know not to buy.
At the last one, a Minnesota consumer products company, the room made one decision on the spot about when the warehouse prints orders. No software, no consultant, one decision. It fixed about half of a problem they had been living with for a year.
Why not just do a free webinar?
Because a webinar teaches the tool and your team goes back to doing exactly what they did before. Nobody changes how they work because of a slide. They change when it is their own job on the wall and they picked what gets fixed.
Also, the webinar is free because it is a sales pitch for something that is not free.
What is included and what is not?
Included: the prep call, an intake survey for your team, the day on site anywhere in the Twin Cities, the readout, and the ranked list. For the two-day version, the maps and the plan.
Not included: travel outside the Twin Cities, which is at cost, and building anything. If the top idea on the list is a build, that is a separate, fixed-price conversation and you are under no obligation to have it with me.
Is there a cheaper way to start?
Yes. The half day at $1,500 is the cheapest useful thing I do. Nonprofits, co-ops, and arts groups get a rate below that. Ask.
Answered by Jared Lukes, Minneapolis. Twenty-five years in brand, UX, and technology, currently holding fractional AI and technology seats at three companies. About Jared.