Using AI Tools Effectively in Small Business Consulting
The UW-Madison Small Business Development Center (SBDC) has hosted two hands-on workshops for the Badger Consulting Club, in April and October 2025, to explore how students can use AI tools in their consulting work. Entitled “AI + BC = Smarter Small Business Consulting: A Badger’s Guide to Unlocking AI”, the interactive training uses case studies to help students apply AI tools in real time to business scenarios like market research, hiring strategy, and competitive analysis.
“I got a basic base for AI skills and how to think about the content I am receiving more critically,” says participant Amelia McCartney (‘29).
The Badger Consulting Club provides pro bono consulting services, such as industry insights, market research, financial analyses, and risk analyses for small businesses in the Madison area. Students gain real-world business consulting experience and build relationships with Wisconsin companies.
The SBDC team has mentored Badger Consulting Club since 2017, selecting small groups of students to work directly with SBDC’s full-time business consultants on about eight projects each year. These consulting projects address real-world small business needs, like SWOT analyses, industry research, consumer insights, and marketing analytics. Students also have opportunities to work on four to six additional projects for other organizations.
The AI workshop was a way for the SBDC to extend their mentoring relationship with Badger Consulting Club and give students an opportunity to develop, practice, and hone their skills using AI tools and evaluating the results.
“AI tools are very exciting, and we want to encourage the student consultants to engage with Large Language Models in positive, productive, and secure ways that add real value to their work,” says Erica Kauten SBDC Director Michelle Somes-Booher. “The training allows us to standardize their approach to using AI and ensure that they are vetting their results.”
The SBDC created the workshop curriculum from their consulting experiences with small businesses, and the training aims to help student consultants avoid some of the common mistakes small businesses make when using AI.
Badger Consulting Club president Wyatt Anderson says the club booked the SBDC AI workshop twice both because of their relationship with the SBDC and the importance of training members in AI.
“We deeply value the resources, connections, and overall relationship we have with the SBDC,” Anderson says. “We’re enthusiastic about any programming they offer! In addition, we always strive to improve the quality of analysis our
members provide to our clients. AI has been an important tool in enhancing the work we do.”
Because AI is here to stay, Anderson explains, AI skills are essential.
“Equipping our members with the skills needed to succeed in a changing professional landscape is something we’re passionate about, and AI proficiency is one of those skills,” he says.
Workshop activities were designed to help students better understand when, or if, AI tools should be used in specific consulting contexts. Students were encouraged to use critical thinking to align AI usage with the client’s needs, the nature of the project, and the ethical considerations involved in their work.
“Talking to all of the presenters was invaluable,” says Armaan Jain (‘28). “The interactive setup was great, as well, to show the utilization of AI in research and analysis specifically.”
Students learned to use the digital literacy strategy of lateral reading, a technique used by professional fact-checkers, to evaluate AI-generated insights. Lateral reading helps readers assess the credibility of AI-generated information, rather than accepting it at face value, and determine when AI is conflating material from different sources. Readers move “laterally” across the internet to review information from multiple trusted sources.
Wil Lackner (‘28) says the workshop gave him an action plan for using AI in consulting projects.
“In future projects, I will use AI when I am stuck or need further guidance about a topic, but for specific research, I will utilize lateral reading to make sure that the sources are valid,” he says. “I think that the information about how to prompt better was very helpful. I also think that just being able to talk to people that have lots of experience in using AI, and hearing about the different methods that people have used to prompt differently, was beneficial, because it creates different ways to think about using AI.”
Joely Emerson (‘27) agrees.
“The workshop helped me reframe the idea of AI usage from the standpoint that you can use your brain first, then AI, vs. the other way around,” Emerson says.
Workshop participants collaborated to critically evaluate AI-generated information and turn it into reliable, data-driven client insights. Students also gained hands-on experience blending consulting frameworks with AI to deliver smarter, faster, and more impactful solutions.
“The information about prompting and when AI is truly useful was insightful,” says Garrett Butler (‘28). “I now feel more comfortable in my decision-making process about when to utilize AI and when not to.”
The course also explores the ethics of AI in business and trains students to sharpen their judgment on when AI is the right tool, and when it’s not.
“This workshop helped me further understand how to apply AI usage ethically in a business use case,” says Kate Hutchinson (‘28). “In attending, I learned strategies that I will be sure to implement into my work at Badger Consulting and my future career.”
The session was primarily case study-based, with the case studies including common experiences SBDC’s small business clients encounter.
“I really enjoyed the hands-on cases,” says Badger Consulting Club Vice President Internal Megan Mayhew, who participated in the workshop. “It was great to be able to hear from other students and interact. Overall, the workshop
was very insightful, and I would recommend it to other students and business owners.”
The SBDC created the workshop as part of the AI U student projects initiative, which is supported by AI U, an initiative by America’s SBDC, in partnership with Google.org, dedicated to providing foundational AI training to small businesses and their advisors.
“We were excited to be able to bring our experience to the group, both with AI in particular, and with consulting in general,” says SBDC Program Manager Heather Ferguson. “Student–and entrepreneur–experience with AI varies a lot right now. Because AI is user-friendly, people learn a lot by doing, which is a great start, but it isn’t always an organized approach. Our approach to building this training combined our consulting experience with more than 500 businesses a year, plus our own learning with broad-use LLMS.”