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, fix what is worth fixing first, and leave you running it without me. AI is how I build it, not what you end up running.
The problem
The business mostly works, and that is half of the problem. More customers means more quoting, invoicing, chasing and copying between systems. It takes time, it falls to you, and it costs you work: when a quote takes a week, the job goes to someone faster.
Or you're here because everyone is telling you to do something with AI, and nobody has told you what is actually worth doing.
Either way, we start with a review.
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
Your business grew. Your systems didn't. The spreadsheets, the one person who knows the rules, the copying and pasting between systems: it's not sustainable anymore, and your hours pay the difference. Usually 10 to 100 people in professional services, health or eCommerce.
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
Everything I do comes back to helping you sell more or run leaner.
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 without me.
What you get
What used to need a development team, three months and a budget to match, one person who knows what they're doing can now build.
Twenty years of how the big end of town builds things, delivered in weeks rather than quarters. Quick to build is not the same as quickly thrown together.
The admin that took over your week now runs itself, and the work that grows the business finally gets your attention.
Not just more traffic. The ones you want, arriving with enough detail to act on.
What I believe
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.
The best technology shouldn't be reserved for the biggest companies.
What needed a head office budget and a team of engineers is now within reach of a business your size. A recent change, and very few have taken it up.
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.
You are not locked in with me.
Keeping me on should earn its place, not be the only way it keeps running.
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.
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, every part of it is mine, 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.
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.