The Unfair Advantage: How DOJO AI and our AI Stack became one of our Secret Weapons Against Big Consulting

While McKinsey sends 20 analysts to spend 3 months researching your industry, we've already built your go-to-market strategy, launched your personal brands, and optimized your ad spend. Here's how.

The Boutique Consultancy Dilemma

Traditional consulting has a simple formula: throw bodies at problems. Need market research? Deploy a team of junior analysts who'll spend three weeks discovering that yes, your customers do indeed want your product to work properly. Building a content strategy? Assign three associates and a PowerPoint specialist. The math is straightforward—more hours equals more billable revenue.

But here's the thing about being a boutique consultancy: you can't play that game.

At A11, we're intentionally small. We're operators who've built unicorns from the inside—Trade Republic, Sennder, ARX. We don't have armies of junior consultants, and frankly, we don't want them. Have you ever tried to explain 'move fast and break things' to someone whose biggest career risk was choosing the wrong PowerPoint template? When you're charging premium rates for proven expertise, you need to deliver results that justify the investment.

So how do you compete with consulting giants when you're deliberately lean? Simple: You don't play their game. You change the rules entirely.

Intelligence Over Bodies

Our competitive advantage comes from multiple factors—proven operators, cross-functional expertise, and our relentless focus on execution over slide decks. But one of our core competitive moats is our AI stack. And DOJO AI has become an essential part of that arsenal.

We're not replacing human expertise with AI—that would be stupid. We're using AI to amplify what expert operators can accomplish. DOJO doesn't make strategic decisions; it accelerates research, generates options, and handles the heavy lifting so our operators can focus on the high-value work that actually moves the needle.

The result? Five operators routinely outmaneuver teams of fifty consultants. Not through longer hours or more PowerPoints, but through better intelligence, faster execution, and frankly, superior preparation.

Here's how we do it.

1. LinkedIn Personal Branding: We Built 7 C-Suite Personal Brands in the Time Most Agencies Onboard One Client

Most agencies treat personal branding like a creative exercise. Mood boards, brand workshops, and enough revision rounds to make Sisyphus feel grateful for his boulder. We treat it like a system.

I created dedicated DOJO threads for each of our A11 C-level executives. Each thread contains their LinkedIn profile, our brand strategy, tone of voice guidelines, and their specific expertise areas. DOJO then:

  • Creates comprehensive LinkedIn content strategies tailored to their voice

  • Researches similar profiles for inspiration and positioning insights

  • Identifies trending topics in their domain

  • Prepares series of LinkedIn post drafts ready for review

But here's where it gets interesting. DOJO also prepared customized 1:1 workshops for each executive that I then delivered to refine their personal brand. I take those insights and feed them into Scripe, which then writes in their authentic voice, prepares multiple post options, and schedules content directly.

We've done this for 7 C-level executives and our entire marketing team. The whole company now has access to this system. While traditional agencies are still conducting discovery sessions, we're already publishing content that drives engagement and builds authority.

2. Content Repurposing: 6 Hours Became 190+ Assets in One Day While Competitors Are Still Transcribing

We recorded 6 hours of livestream content at our AI Summit. Most companies would hire a production agency, wait weeks for edited highlights, and maybe get a handful of social posts that look suspiciously like every other company's social posts.

We fed the entire transcript to DOJO and built a systematic repurposing machine:

  • 90+ Reels/Shorts with timestamps and platform-specific optimization

  • 40+ SEO article drafts with keyword research and content outlines

  • 60+ LinkedIn posts tailored to different executive voices

  • 15 YouTube videos with SEO optimization

  • Complete content calendar spanning months

The process took one day, not weeks. While competitors are still getting quotes from video editors, we're already publishing content across every platform, driving traffic, and building authority in our space.

3. Pitch Preparation: We Show Up Knowing More About Their Business Than They Do

Traditional consultancies prepare for pitches with industry reports and generic frameworks. You know, the same frameworks they used for the last five pitches, just with different logos.

When we're pitching a new client, I feed DOJO multiple sources about their company, industry, and competitive landscape. DOJO then:

  • Prepares a relevant marketing mix specific to their situation

  • Creates high-level strategy guides for each recommended channel

  • Pulls industry-specific examples and case studies

  • Builds a narrative framework aligned with our meeting goals

  • Generates a detailed slide plan with strategic examples woven throughout

I feed this to Beautiful.AI to create branded decks that combine deep research with the real evidence that matters—the impact we've delivered hands-on at Trade Republic, Sennder, and ARX.

The result? We walk into meetings with both comprehensive market intelligence and proven track records. We don't just know their business; we've already solved similar problems at scale. We just spend less time making slides and more time delivering results.

4. SEO Strategy: Built Our Entire Content Strategy Before Traditional Agencies Finished Discovery

When we launched A11, we needed to build SEO authority from zero. No existing blog, just plans for Medium and Substack accounts. Most agencies would start with a 6-week audit.

We connected DOJO to our Google Search Console and GA4 data, then had it:

  • Analyze our current SEO position and opportunities

  • Research competitor content strategies and keyword gaps

  • Suggest a complete hub-and-spoke content model

  • Create content briefs based on our repurposed event materials

  • Design our Medium and Substack setup for maximum SEO impact

We went from strategy to execution in days. While traditional agencies are still presenting their discovery findings, we're already publishing optimized content and building domain authority.

5. Performance Marketing: Real-Time Optimization That Makes Monthly Reports Look Prehistoric

When we take on interim performance marketing projects, most consultancies would assign an account manager to review monthly reports and suggest optimizations.

We connect DOJO directly to their performance marketing channels and GA4. Every week, DOJO:

  • Analyzes performance trends and identifies optimization opportunities

  • Suggests creative briefs that we submit directly to their agency via Trello

  • Recommends specific ads, ad sets, and keywords to pause

  • Identifies keyword and targeting expansions for testing

  • Flags performance anomalies before they become problems

It's like having 2-3 additional analysts on every project, except they never sleep and they're always watching the data.

Making the Impossible Routine

This isn't about efficiency—it's about impossibility. We routinely deliver work that should take weeks in days, research that should require teams in hours, and insights that should cost six figures for the price of a good dinner.

Traditional consulting firms are optimized for billable hours. We're optimized for impossible outcomes.

DOJO AI doesn't make us consultants. It makes us operators with superpowers. While our competitors are still scheduling discovery calls, we're already delivering results.

The future of consulting isn't about having more people. It's about having better intelligence. And frankly, most of our competitors are still figuring out what 'intelligence' means beyond 'expensive MBA.'

We're already living it.

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Luke Costley-White Ventim Neves is Director of Growth at A11, where he builds growth systems for companies scaling to unicorn status. When he's not optimizing conversion funnels, he's probably teaching AI tools to do things they weren't designed for.

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