Not all of our coworkers stay 18 months. William Martin stayed one month. An AI consultant and trainer based in Bourg-lès-Valence, he needed a Paris base before heading off on an assignment at the end of October 2026. We took the chance to ask him four questions about what he really sees in small businesses trying to adopt AI. His answers are more direct than most sales pages on the topic.
What Le Consultant Digital does
William Martin started in digital marketing in 2009, at an industrial company where he ran SEO, paid campaigns and social media for two e-commerce sites. In 2020 he went independent, first in Rennes, then in Valence. Today his business comes down to three jobs: outsourced marketing director for half a day or a day a week, outsourced AI lead for SMEs with nobody in-house, and trainer on generative AI, LinkedIn and digital marketing.
His clients are small-business owners, mostly B2B, in the Drôme, Ardèche and Lyon areas, and remotely across France. He also trains for several Qualiopi-certified training providers, including Mill-Forma, itself based on the Zecoworking floor. His current toolkit: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Make, Canva and NotebookLM.
Late 2024: AI stops being a tool in the offer and becomes the offer
We asked whether there had been a trigger moment. No. “No single trigger, more of a gentle slope, and the shift happened in late 2024.” ChatGPT entered his work through social media training, because his trainees had the same problems he did: the blank page and time.
First, writing posts. Then the editorial calendar, built in minutes where he used to spend half a day. Then visuals. Then SEO copywriting, his original trade. “At every step I realised I was no longer really training people on social media: I was training them to work with AI on social media.” By late 2024, demand said it for him: clients were ordering AI, not social media.
What works in SMEs, and what fails every time
The first use case that holds, in his view, is nothing spectacular: everyday writing. Follow-up emails, quotes, product sheets, posts, meeting notes. Low risk, visible results in the first week.
What fails is not a use case, it’s a profile. “People who don’t know what they want. I ask them which task they repeat every week, and they tell me they have no recurring tasks.” They come to training drawn by the promise you see everywhere, agents that do everything on their own. Except you can’t automate a task you haven’t identified. “An agent is a well-described repetitive task handed to a machine. No task, nothing to hand over.”
At the other end, he mentions a founder who wanted a dashboard centralising his whole business. He knew exactly what he was after. He only needed guidance on choosing the tool (Claude, in his case) and on how to use it. The rest, he built himself. “The difference between the two profiles has nothing to do with technical level. One knew what he was looking for, the other didn’t.”
An SEO agent that runs every morning on his own site
He applies his own rule to himself. His website is monitored by an agent that connects to his SEO tool, analyses the data, suggests optimisations and tracks visibility over time. It launches on its own every morning. William finds its recommendations when he sits down, and the agent also drafts his pages and proposes strategy.
Time saved? Hard to quantify, and he says so plainly: “It’s mostly something I wasn’t doing, for lack of time. Regular SEO follow-up used to come after clients and training. Now it gets done, and I only keep the decision.” The agent works for the reason he repeats in training: the task was clear, repetitive, and he knew what he expected from it.
Making clients autonomous, and still making a living
His About page sets the tone: the goal is never to remain indispensable. We asked whether that kills his revenue. “It’s the basis of any training: if the client still needs the trainer to do their tasks, the training wasn’t effective.”
The relationship doesn’t disappear, it changes nature. With the pace at which tools move, there are always adjustments to make. Less training, more support: regular check-ins to follow what’s new, adapt the tools, go further. “The client comes back because they want to move forward, not because they’re stuck.”
One month at Pont de Neuilly
William Martin’s stay illustrates a use of the floor we talk about less than closed offices: the temporary base. An independent from the provinces who needs a few weeks in Paris, reliable fibre for video calls, a meeting room to receive people, and an address two minutes’ walk from La Défense. The one-month commitment, with no notice period or penalty, exists exactly for this: arrive, work, leave when the assignment starts.
He leaves the floor at the end of October 2026 for his next assignment. We wish him good training sessions, and we’ll keep a desk warm for his next Paris stopover.
An SME with nobody to own the topic in-house can bring him in as a part-time AI lead for SMEs, with the same rule as in training: make the team self-sufficient.