The Prosperous Consultant

(Formerly The AI-Powered Business Advisor)

Issue #1 — January 06, 2026

They asked us the wrong question.

When we were kids, teachers and relatives and guidance counselors asked us the same thing: "What do you want to do when you grow up?"

So we contemplated career paths. Made life-altering decisions. Went to college or didn't. Landed jobs we hoped would deliver the house, the car, the good life with the picket fence.

And many of us got those things... only to realize we were still unfulfilled.

The question was wrong.

The better question would have been: "How do you want to live when you grow up?"

If we'd started there, our career choices might have looked very different.

Here's the thing: the answer to that question—how you want to live—might stay constant. Flourishing. Fulfillment. Presence. A life you're genuinely excited to wake up to.

But the path to get there changes with your season.

An empty nester's path looks different than someone with kids still at home.

Same destination. Different routes depending on where you are.

This is where a consulting business, built correctly, becomes powerful.

Not because it makes you wealthy, though it can. But because it creates options.

When your value is disconnected from your hours... when clients pay for transformation rather than time... when your hard-won wisdom and lived experience command premium fees... you get something most people never have...

The ability to design your life around how you want to live.

Yes, there are growth phases where the calendar fills up and special projects demand extra attention. That's reality. But when the business model is right, the day-to-day work transforms from pushing a boulder uphill to a peaceful flow.

Clients get tremendous value from your years of experience. And you've trained them to understand there's no connection between the hours you put in and the transformation they receive.

Smart use of AI and automation helps—it buys you time and handles the grunt work.

But equally important is knowing when to do things that simply don't scale. The personal attention. The human moments. That's what protects your positioning and makes you irreplaceable.

I turned 61 in December. The only thing on my bucket list heading into this birthday was becoming a grandfather.

A couple weeks ago I was on the floor with my grandson Cade. He's eight months old, not quite crawling yet. His tiny fingers gripped my thumb while he studied my face with that ancient gaze babies have—the one that sees right through you.

That's what prosperity looks like in my season.

Yours might look different. Maybe it's showing up at every one of your kid's games. Maybe it's the freedom to travel for a month. Maybe it's simply not dreading Monday mornings anymore, or taking your soul mate to brunch on Tuesday.

The specifics don't matter. The principle does: design for how you want to live, then build the business that creates options to get you there. 

Wealth is about what you accumulate. Prosperity is about how you live.

That distinction is why this newsletter has a new name.

For the past year, I've been writing The AI-Powered Business Advisor. I shared a lot of tactical tips, and I'll keep doing that.

But somewhere along the way, the writing kept returning to something deeper. Not just building a business, but building a life worth living.

The Prosperous Consultant is what this has really been about all along.  

This issue is a bit different—it's the rebrand announcement, the "here's what this is and why" moment.

Starting next week, you'll get the full format...tactical deep dives, frameworks, and strategies you can use immediately. The tools matter, and I won't shortchange you on them.

But they'll always be in service of something bigger: creating the options to live the way you want to live.

Welcome to The Prosperous Consultant.

I'm glad you're here.

Dale