Technology that works as hard as you do
For Australian businesses that have grown faster than their systems. I find where the time and money is going, put the right fix in place, and come back later to check it paid off.
The problem
Usually it's one of three things:
You are your first brain: you know your business better than anyone.
Technology is your second brain: the systems that should carry the load you carry now.
I am your third brain: I review, build and coach, then get out of the way.
Who it's for
Owners of 10 to 100 people in professional services, health or eCommerce. Your business grew and your systems didn't: the spreadsheets, the one person who knows the rules, the copying and pasting between systems. Your hours pay the difference.
Business coaches: you tell clients to work on the business, not in it. I build the thing that makes that possible. IT providers, accountants and consultants: when your clients ask about AI, I can be the training or build capability behind your offer. Under your brand or mine.
Referring someone to ThirdbrainWho it isn't for: if you would rather build it yourself, you don't need me, and some of it you genuinely could. If nothing about how the work gets done can change, the tools will not help on their own. And I don't work in gambling, tobacco or weapons.
A lot of us treat ourselves as systems. We are the repository for data, and we make the judgement calls. What we've learnt here is how to actually approach it: how it talks to other systems, how to clean the data and interrogate the transaction rules. If we can learn the methodology, that's more useful than fixing one problem.Head of Finance, an Australian manufacturer
How it works
I work out what's worth doing, and most of the time it isn't AI. Then I put the answer in place in weeks rather than months. I make complex problems simple, and make sure your team can use the result with confidence.
A look at how your business runs today: who does what, what is still manual, and where the data lives. You come away with a short, ranked list of what is actually worth doing, each with what it is worth to you a year and what the first one would cost.
Connecting systems that don't talk to each other, automating the repetitive work, custom tools, and websites that bring in the right enquiries.
Hands-on sessions for you and your team, on your own business and data, so you understand what's possible and can run it yourselves.
AI training options and pricesA recruiter used to start each day working out who to call. Now the ten best people to call are waiting for her every morning. No new system, no code. It took a small change to her process and one extra detail captured as she went, and she runs it herself.
What you get
No more guessing which problem to tackle. You know what to fix first, what it's worth, and why it beats the alternatives.
We agree the number before the work starts. Afterwards I measure the result against it and tell you what I found, good or bad.
The retyping, chasing and copying between systems come off your team. Quick to put in place, never quickly thrown together.
Not just more traffic. The ones you want, arriving with enough detail to act on.
What I believe
One person can now do what used to take a team of ten.
What used to take months can now be delivered in weeks, so the best technology is no longer reserved for the biggest companies. A recent change, and very few have taken it up.
No business should be held together by someone's evenings.
I have seen too many owners go harder and longer until something gives. The ones who would gain most have no hour spare to look into it.
Most of the time, AI isn't the answer.
Plain automation does about 95 percent of the work, and it does the same thing every time.
Find the simplest thing that solves it.
Usually connecting what you already pay for, not replacing it. Sometimes it isn't software at all, and either way you get a working thing, not a slide.
The best results are tailored, never one size fits all.
Every business and every team is different. What works is shaped around your people and how they already work.
I'm not tied to any system.
Technology keeps getting better. My job is to find the best fit for the job at hand, not to push a vendor or a favourite tool.
I help growing businesses use technology the way the best companies do, so they can punch above their weight.The mission
Free AI resources
Plain-language guides to what AI can and cannot do in an Australian business, and to the settings and habits that make the tools more useful. These are the general cases. For yours, get in touch.
See all resources
About David
Based in Sydney, David spent two decades building digital products at Woolworths, Blackwoods, nib and Transport for NSW. At WooliesX he led a team of nine behind the products serving 20M+ online orders a year, including the chatbots that automated customer service.
He's not against AI consultants. He's against selling the dream: the one-day workshop that promises AI will do everything and you'll walk out an expert, from someone who couldn't build what they're selling. Since going independent he builds with AI every day, including Lit Spelling, a product he built on his own that now has paying customers around the world. Operator credibility, not theory.
See what he builds at davidtheproduct.com.
An Australia where you don't need a big-company budget to get the best technology and the know-how to apply it.The vision
Questions
Different job, and often a good partnership. They keep the business running: hardware, licences, security, uptime and the vendors behind all of it. That is a discipline of its own and it is not mine. I look at how the work actually flows, where the time goes and where the sales leak, then fix that. If you have a good IT provider, keep them. I work alongside them.
You could, and some of it you should. The tools are genuinely accessible now. What takes the time is knowing which problem to solve first, and building it so it still works in a year when someone changes a form field. That is what twenty years of this buys you.
Ask what they have built that people use every day, and who runs it after they leave. Ask when they last told a client AI was the wrong tool for the job, because someone who only ever says yes is selling, not advising. Daily use of Claude or ChatGPT is table stakes now, so on its own it tells you little. What they have built is the better signal.
No, I do the work myself, start to finish. You are engaging me, not a firm that wins the job and passes it to an offshore team or a graduate. The same person is in the first conversation, the review, the build and the coaching. That caps how much I take on, which is deliberate. If a job needs a specialist, I'll tell you up front.
Not by itself, and it is not what I would aim for. What comes off your team is the typing, the copying between systems and the chasing. What's left is the judgement, which is why you hired them. Whether that turns into fewer people or more done is a decision you make, not one the tools make for you.
Less than you fear, but not none. The review needs a few hours from you and whoever knows how the work actually gets done, because that detail lives in people's heads and nowhere else. The build is mine. The coaching is yours, but it happens on your own work, so it is not time away from the business. The one thing I do need is to be able to reach you when something needs a decision.
Weeks, not months. A review runs one to two weeks depending how wide it goes, and builds are counted in weeks too. It is quick because there is no team to coordinate and nothing to procure, not because anything is rushed. What you end up running is held to the standard I had to meet at enterprise scale.
The first conversation is free. For reviews and builds: a proper look at how your business runs is a fixed fee, usually $3,000 to $5,000, agreed up front. The build is then priced on what it is worth to you, usually 10 to 20 percent of the first year's value, worked out from your figures rather than mine: what it costs you to run today, and what it costs you in sales. So a process costing you $150,000 a year is a $15,000 to $30,000 build. Payback is inside three months, and every year after that is yours. You see that arithmetic before anything gets built, and if the numbers do not stack up we stop there. AI training for your team is priced separately, from $10,500 plus GST for 6 weeks with up to 8 people.
AI training options and pricesYes, and it runs differently. Private, one-to-one coaching over 12 weeks, fitted around your diary and always on your own work. $14,500 plus GST for the 12 weeks.
Private AI coaching for executivesA first conversation
Thirty minutes on how your business runs today and where the time goes. If it is not useful, you will know quickly. No deck, no pitch.