How To Use AI In Consulting To Build Career Assets And Stay Relevant – With Conor Lynch, Author of “Learn Earn Own”

In a recent episode of the HR business marketing podcast, A Better HR Business, Ben and his guest, Conor Lynch, digital innovator, educator, and author of “Learn Earn Own”, talk about how individuals and HR professionals can future-proof their careers and businesses as technology accelerates the pace of change and automation looms.

Conor Lynch is a digital innovator and educator who grew his personal brand, Connector, from a side hustle into a seven-figure business. With over 25 years of experience across marketing, technology, and communications, he has worked with global brands including Guinness and Coca-Cola.

He began his career in traditional marketing after graduating from Smurfit College, Ireland’s leading business school, before moving into online and social media as the internet reshaped the industry. Today, he focuses on helping individuals and organisations build long-term digital assets, embracing AI and automation as the next major shift in work and business.

Learn Earn Own challenges the century-old idea of the career ladder—study hard, get a job, and climb the ranks—and argues it no longer reflects the reality of modern work. In today’s economy, relying on a single income stream is increasingly risky, and careers are shifting from linear paths to dynamic portfolios of assets.

Rather than encouraging people to quit their jobs, the book focuses on building alongside employment: learning new skills, creating additional income streams, and owning digital and intellectual assets that compound over time.

It introduces a practical framework for anyone—regardless of background—to become an “experimenter” by building career assets such as personal brands, digital products, content, networks, and expertise.

Packed with tools, templates, AI prompts, and real-world strategies, Learn Earn Own is a hands-on guide to designing a more independent, resilient, and opportunity-rich career in the age of AI.

You’ll hear practical strategies for using AI in consulting, business growth strategies for consultants, and how to stand out as a consultant amid rapid industry change. Whether you identify as HR, workplace, L&D, OD, recruitment, or people & culture, you’ll discover real stories and actionable advice to attract clients, win contracts, and grow sustainably.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The “assets ladder” framework for long-term career value creation with or without entrepreneurship.
• Real-world examples of digital products, web apps, and personal brands as assets for consultants.
• How to experiment with AI tools and side projects—even as an employee—to future-proof your consulting career.
• Why building career assets is more sustainable than climbing a traditional career ladder, and how to get started.

• Conor’s website: www.conorlyn.ch
• Conor’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/conorlynch

Scroll down for the video version and the transcript.

Ok, onto the show!

Interview – How To Use AI In Consulting To Build Career Assets And Stay Relevant – with Conor Lynch

---

You can find the podcast on all the main podcast players.

---

About The ‘A Better HR Business’ Podcast

In my HR marketing podcast, I talk with different HR consultants and HR tech companies from around the world to learn about what they do and how they keep their businesses healthy and moving in the right direction.

If you have questions you want to ask me about growing an HR consultancy or marketing for HR tech companies, just let me know or visit the HR marketing services page.

Remember to subscribe to our mailing list to get notified of new episodes.

Enjoy the show!

---

Episode Transcript

Episode 306: How To Use AI In Consulting To Build Career Assets And Stay Relevant – with Conor Lynch

Ben Geoghegan [00:00:28]:
Welcome back. I’m really looking forward to my conversation with Conor Lynch. Conor is a fabulous guy. Met him in person, would you believe, not just the Ethernet, the Internet. He is a digital innovator and educator who grew his personal brand – Connector – starting from a side hustle into a seven figure business. With award winning experience building global brands and training over 5,000 professionals, he now helps ambitious individuals, groups and organizations build assets with long term value. And we’re going to be discussing his fabulous new book called Learn Earn Own, which is just such a huge topic in the rise of the AI world. But before we get into that, Conor, thank you very much for joining me today.

Conor Lynch [00:01:07]:
Thank you, Ben, it was lovely to meet you too.

Ben Geoghegan [00:01:09]:
I want to get into Learn Earn Own in just a minute because it’s a fabulous insight for employees, for people in consulting careers, even running businesses. But I think for kids coming through the next generation. But for context, it’s about moving from the career ladder to career assets and thriving in the age of AI. And it’s about building assets and a new way of work. But before we do that, you came from a traditional world of work. Do you want to give us a quick snapshot of that and, you know, leading up to the agency and beyond?

Conor Lynch [00:01:37]:
I actually climbed the career ladder myself, went to college, studied marketing, graduated with a degree, went to Smurfit College, Ireland’s top business school, graduated from there, then I worked in marketing. But the Internet started to emerge and I thought, this is amazing. Beyond dancing leprechauns and cats and whatever, I just thought this is so much potential. I finally was interested in IT. Put my entire career into online and then into social media. And then this is the third wave now, AI and automation. So I’ve been working in technology for about 25 years from a marketing and communications and a business perspective. And along the way I worked for some top agencies, worked for brands like Guinness, Coca Cola, while I was an employee.

And then I decided, Oh, I think I could probably do this on my own. Like I could probably set up my own agency, not realizing how hard it was. But I did succeed. And then we ended up working with the likes of Sony and Huawei and Volkswagen and Benecol. But it was a hard slog for 10 years. It ended up with an exit. I sold the business to another agency.

And this was just before the lockdowns. And I then started to take stock on my career and other careers and what I’d learned and what I’ll do next. But very much a traditional go to school, get a job, climb the ladder, et cetera, et cetera. I’ve done all of that.

Ben Geoghegan [00:02:51]:
Yeah. Tell us about the Connector business itself. What sort of services and then, how did that grow?

Conor Lynch [00:02:56]:
Yeah, well, it’s actually started off as meetups. So I started off as a little meetup called Connector because it was like a personal brand. Conor is in Connector. So I thought, okay, that’s kind of quirky. So I started getting together with a few friends and then I kind of grew from the first one had 12 people. Then we were regularly getting 100, 120 people meeting up to discuss digital and entrepreneurship and all the rest. This was about 2008 – 2009. I was learning about community and raising my profile and simultaneously building my personal brand.

Then I quit my job and decided to go all in with this agency. Along the way, we launched some software, we launched a training division. We did a lot of services around traditional digital marketing, but also events. We were very strong on events and experiences and ran events for 500 people at times for the likes of EY and Huawei, in Ireland and abroad. So huge, huge amount of learnings. And I discussed learning, earning and owning. They wanted to take control and own more of my work. That was essentially what happen happened.

Ben Geoghegan [00:03:55]:
So if we turn to the book Learn Earn Own, we’re constantly hearing the numbers, the statistics of either job losses or the economic foundations, talking about how jobs are going to disappear. And maybe then you get the bright side, oh, it’s okay, there’ll be other jobs that are created and things like that. And I saw one job a while back in the COVID which was an emoji interpreter, I think it was. And there were DJs at football, soccer matches because there was no crowds. And yes, there are new jobs. Perhaps not all of them will last with the rise of AI. I think your thesis is that we need to think differently as individuals in terms of personal wealth creation, income, revenue. And by generating not steps on a career ladder, but building career assets.

So could you give us a little bit of an explanation by what that means?

Conor Lynch [00:04:43]:
Yeah. So I actually came up with a new framework, it’s called the assets ladder. So instead of climbing the career ladder, you climb the assets ladder. And the assets ladder starts off at 0%. You’re an owner of nothing as an employee. Most workers own nothing in the business that they work in. So seekers workers have zero percent ownership. But then as you move up the ladder, you move from a partner, you might have a 50-50 with somebody partner on an asset. And an asset could be a digital product, it could be an event, it could be a community, it could be a personal brand, it could be a web app. It doesn’t have to be a factory, it doesn’t have to be a business. Digital assets have created so many opportunities for people to become owners of something. So I call these career assets. And you don’t have to be wealthy to have assets anymore. You can build your own assets if you don’t have the money to buy assets. So I built up my personal brand as an asset and end up selling it on.

And then you’re moving up the assets ladder. At the top of the ladder you’re an owner. But then you can be a multiplier, you can have multiple assets. I talk about multilinear careers rather than linear careers. So people will be doing more things, you know and try and make them more integrated with what you’re doing. But also how could you collaborate with others? So a big step in this is partnerships. So how can you partner with more people, have more collaborative careers? So that’s the assets ladders part of the book. And then career assets is a big thing where basically anyone can create something nowadays and take more ownership of your work.

Don’t necessarily spend all your time working on somebody else’s dreams, work on your own.

Ben Geoghegan [00:06:15]:
The Google famous example was that they used to get 10% of their work time to be able to work on side projects. It was still I think a Google project, but that’s how you in theory you got these brilliant new ideas that the company could expand on. It’s self fulfilling and then yes, you get bonuses and stuff, but it’s not really your asset. So can you give some examples, practical examples of what assets are that a person in a job right now could start to develop and build?

Conor Lynch [00:06:41]:
So for example, you could be a great writer, but you could write all your content for the company blog and not put anything on your own domain name. On your own personal brand. Your personal brand is your strongest potential asset. Just to get started. Everyone can start creating assets today. It’s not about saving up to it.

So if you’re creating content, if you’re on social media active, why not save some of your best ideas for your own profile? Instead of giving away all your good stuff, think more about what you can do to raise your own brand profile rather than the company want. You can now create web applications tools with AI code. So is there something you can do? On the side is a little side project, a learning project. It doesn’t have to be a business. I make the big distinction between being an entrepreneur and being an experimenter. So you and I are entrepreneurial. We’re gone out and we’ve done our own thing and we, you know, but it’s not for everybody. So if you want to find out if it is for you and how to get there in small steps, take an experimental approach and try and run some experiments.

So the book is full of prompts. You know, you can upload your CV and then you can run some prompts to kind of come up with multiple ideas for you. Learning projects, earning projects, owning projects. So just you can start, feel like an owner, take ownership of your career rather than waiting and have from Helen and HR to manage your career and tell you what to do next. Career guidance is still quite similar to when I was in school. You know, go to school, get a job, climb the ladder. We need new ideas. So that’s why I thought the book had to be written from an entrepreneurial point of view, from somebody who has been there and done that and gone out on my own and pioneered and then sat down and wrote down, okay, what did I learn? How can I build frameworks that make this easier to understand, you know, and follow? As you said earlier, it could be somebody starting off, it could be somebody mid career, somebody late career that just is a bit stuck and think, okay, how can I come up with new ideas either on my own or collaboratively with others?

Ben Geoghegan [00:08:32]:
And to put that into an HR context for listeners from my own career, I went through an assets ladder approach which was in a job I was doing HR, let’s call it internal HR consulting, business partner type stuff. I went to my boss and said, I keep running conversations with line managers about managing underperformers and difficult people. Is it okay if I develop a little training course that we take all the line managers through on how to handle these difficult conversations? And I teamed up with a training person who was really good at running training sessions. I then started teaching that in night schools. That was an hourly rate of pay, so it wasn’t an asset yet, but it was teaching me stuff. And then later on, as you mentioned partnering, I contacted an employee engagement or retention expert in another country and said, you’ve got this brilliant book and package thing. Can I rebrand it for Australia? And he said, yeah, cool. We teamed up, did a lot of work to rebrand it, started selling it, and then of course, we had the global recession, which killed any need for employee retention.

But the point is, from an internal job, you can develop assets, whether that be training courses, books, training courses. And now, for instance, we have AI tools, you know, write your proposal or write your LinkedIn posts and things like that. So I love these examples that you’re sharing. And do you see that there’s a greater need or a greater takeout point or what’s the demand, do you think? Or people just don’t get it yet.

Conor Lynch [00:09:53]:
I love your examples, Ben, and that’s totally it. You had that moment, say, okay, I’ve got a really good idea. Do I just hand it over or do I try and look after myself a little bit more with this? Can I build these ideas for more personal benefit? Because you might get canned in the job and then you’ve handed over everything. And that’s what people are worried about. I’m finding that actually a number of people are buying the book for their children. I was in a college recently and I just chatted to four of them at random, and they were all very worried about AI and what it means for their career. But people are now starting to realize that something huge is happening and changing, and I think it could finally be the impetus for people taking more ownership of their career, more ownership of their career planning. Because I’ve found that no one really plans beyond the next job. That’s a big problem.

Ben Geoghegan [00:10:38]:
Well, look, the way I think about it is that the AI platforms and tools that we hear about, they’re owned by a handful of billionaires.

And there are many others. But there is a level where it’s owned by someone else, in which case you then have to beg or pay to use these services or access these tools and things. So it’s better to be an owner of things and have a bit more control and revenue options and income options, as well as control over what you use and do. Is that a fair enough call?

Conor Lynch [00:11:08]:
Absolutely. Yeah. Like I recently created, one of the hardest assets to create is like a book. From the book, there’s going to be some small courses. There’s also a web application that’s created using Claude Code. So it’s very much in the hands of people like you and me that maybe weren’t traditionally coders that have ideas to whip up a web application that kind of a utilitarian purpose can be useful for something and use that as another way to capture data, to derive further insights, to create new products. So there’s huge amounts of people who’ve been very successful creating web applications and apps now because of democratization of coding. I’m very excited about the next phase, but I think it’s bringing people on the journey that it’s just take ownership of your work, take ownership of your career, learn more skills, earn more income and own more assets. That’s the crux of the book.

Ben Geoghegan [00:11:59]:
You mentioned Claude Code. Everyone knows about ChatGPT and maybe a handful of other things. Can you explain what is Claude Code? It can seem quite technical. So if someone want to build something where they can say, hey, come and use this thing, whether it’s free or paid, but come and use this thing, whether that’s as a consultant or as a solo person looking to build their first little test asset from an HR business perspective, what could they build? Maybe it’s a job interview guide tool or something. How would they use it to do something like that?

Conor Lynch [00:12:31]:
Ever since I started my career, I collaborated with people who are more technical than me because I never studied computer science. So recently a friend of mine, we worked on a Claude Code web application. It’s a tool that allows somebody to upload their CV into our web application, the Learn Earn Own web application. And it will then give you three possible career paths for you to choose and prompts are all pre supplied. So you can create a personalized report for somebody based on my knowledge and based on the knowledge bank that is within Claude or within ChatGPT. These are the type of tools that I talk about and my guests talk about at my events because I’m always learning and I’m finding that Claude Code is slightly more technically advanced for the basic user, that Lovable and Replit and Claude Codecs could be more accessible just to get started, but it is a next step.

Ben Geoghegan [00:13:21]:
So that is the Learn Earn Own idea generator web app, is that right?

Conor Lynch [00:13:27]:
That’s right, yeah. So it’s learnearnown.me is the website you can get free access to that application, but it’s only one of many. I have tons of stuff in the book, different scorecards that I now need to turn into web applications. So you can do this test, do this quiz, do this checklist, get this person report, here’s your recommendations. So for your listeners. Yeah. Is there something that people find valuable that you can create and it’s a unique insight or you have an ebook that you did on it, or you did 20 blogs before on a topic, turn that into a knowledge base, bring it into something like Notebook LM or Gamma, create some content or else bring it in and create a web application.

Ben Geoghegan [00:14:04]:
The way I built my business up from the beginning was I blogged, blogged, blogged a lot before moving into my business. And then eventually when I started, I had a web following and traffic and all that kind of stuff. I then years later took all those blog posts, turn them into an ebook, and then that turned into content for training courses and workshops which sold or memberships and things like that. And the evolution of that is now that has gone in and created one of our AI tools, which is the Ask Ben tool, whereby I’m not there 24 7, but Ask Ben is. And it’s got all the information stuff.

Conor Lynch [00:14:40]:
This is classic learning, earning and owning. And you’ve raised your profile, you’ve thought about Ben, the brand, you’re creating content, built the audience, monetize the audience, add new services, collaborations, run events. People can learn tons from your journey.

Ben Geoghegan [00:14:54]:
Yeah, thank you very much. But two things. One is a your book. Firstly, I’ve been right through it. I love all the stories and examples. There are people in there sharing their experience and thoughts on it and the feedback on the books. I love that. It’s very engaging.

And secondly, around that, you mentioned the kids. It’s definitely a book you could hand to your teenage kids and say, all right, here’s the future. It’s got all these exercises and tools and things to get them to think. And yes, there are prompts, so they get to play with technology, which probably make it more exciting for them to use it. Something else that you triggered there was the fact that if someone wants to stay in a career, in a job, they like doing the job or the steady income and stuff like that, but they like the idea of a side thing and they cannot necessarily get permission to do stuff. There is a thing. Well, one way of calling is the faceless offer. That’s what people talk about.

Some of my clients, they come out and they say, I want to launch a business, but I’m not ready yet. What do I do? And so that’s where the blogging, the newsletter stuff comes in to build up an audience. But they can do that without their name. And some of them end up creating products and stay in their jobs. Handbooks, industry guides and stuff, which they can then sell through Facebook ads and stuff. That’s what we do. But it doesn’t all have to be, I am now running a business and everyone buy my product. There are other ways of doing it. Is that right?

Conor Lynch [00:16:05]:
That’s right, yeah. It’s not about quitting your job, it’s about not letting your job be your only plan because the rug could be pulled from under you. Having a one income strategy is more risky nowadays. So dig a well before you get thirsty. Start thinking about what other things could I do? You know, as Daniel Priestly would say, you’re standing on a mountain of knowledge already. What can you do to mine that and bring it out to the market and, you know, could be through some content, could be through an ebook, could be through an interactive web application and collaborate with others. If you’re not technical, find some friends that are. And for the last year and a half, I just got together with some mates, we call it as the AI Street Fighters, just got into a room with a screen and said, okay, what’s the latest this week? Let’s just have a look at who’s doing what.

You have to have a little bit of time to spend on your career because it’s so important. Because as I say, it could disappear, the job could disappear and now is the time to get ready.

Ben Geoghegan [00:16:58]:
And I like that idea of just learning, tinkering away with some stuff and you’ll be surprised what comes out. And it may be something completely different. I mean, there are so many examples of famous, big, huge companies that have gone down completely different paths. What’s the home sharing place? Airbnb. I mean, that was just an Excel spreadsheet hidden behind a little booking form or something originally, and now it’s a big fancy global company. But I remember years and years ago, an American guy moved to my hometown of Perth in Australia and he went, oh, I don’t know what’s on. He started keeping a simple spreadsheet of festivals and concerts and things that were on and everyone kept asking for it. So he just made a simple little one page website.

It wasn’t selling it, but I’m sure that could have evolved into something much bigger.

Conor Lynch [00:17:47]:
Absolutely. So the point of the book as well, I do give prompts if you want to get promoted, here’s some prompts. If you want to stay in your job, here’s some prompts. If you want to learn new skills and they won’t allow you to start no-code tools at work, do it in the evening and then come back into work and say, this is what I whipped up at the weekend. Can I now work on the new gig guide? Can I get a job in the music sector? Because I love music, because I can no-code and whip up, you know, this guest list app or something like that. It’s not about ditching everything and running off and setting up a unicorn. It’s about, okay, how can learning new skills help you? No matter whether you’re employed or self employed or an employer, there’s something in it for everybody. People just have to start taking those first steps, learning something new, whether to tell your boss about it or to tell your next boss or to do your own thing, you know, be your own boss.

Ben Geoghegan [00:18:34]:
Love it. If people want to learn more about the book and or your events and what you’re up to, what should they do next?

Conor Lynch [00:18:41]:
I basically run my website through substack. It’s on my own domain name, www.conorlyn.ch and the book is on Amazon, it’s on Kindle. But you can go to my website for links to all the different things that I’m up to.

Ben Geoghegan [00:18:56]:
So yeah, if you’re listening to this on the go, we’ll have those links in the show notes. But do check out the book for yourself. If you’re in a job, if you’re running a business, then definitely check it out because it will trigger ideas on products, services you can create or even create them internally. You don’t have to be selling stuff necessarily. It might be about how do you maintain your clients and maintain your service, but in an easier way, which either gives you an easier life or it might create more income because you can take on more clients. So think differently there. And then lastly, as we discussed, definitely think about getting it for your kids because it’s a really enjoyable read, very practical, lots of examples and tools, as I said. So they will enjoy it and it will trigger conversations with them as well for what happens in the future.

So I think you’ve done a great job, Connor. I’m really impressed and thank you for sharing it today.

Conor Lynch [00:19:43]:
Oh, thank you, Ben. It was so nice to hear your story as well and I look forward to meeting up in person again soon.

Topics covered: using AI in consulting, business growth strategies for consultants, how to stand out as a consultant, HR consultants, workplace consultants, personal brand assets.

Note: Get More HR Clients has some affiliate referral partnerships with software and service companies and may receive compensation accordingly. However, we only ever recommend products and services that we have reviewed carefully and that we trust. In most cases, we use them in our own business too.