A map of the lake. You can't fish water you haven't sounded. One call, and we come back with a map: every task eating your week, the hours it takes, and which ones an AI can do by next month. Then we build the first one.
Scanning
0 hours a week found so far.
Most AI advice is about AI. This is about your week.
You don't need to know what a model is, which one's best this month, or whether to worry about agents. You need to know which of the forty things you did last week could have happened without you. That's a question about your business, not about AI, and it's the only one we ask on the first call.
Then we sound the lake. We walk through how a job moves from the first call to the money landing, and mark every place a person is retyping, chasing, reminding or waiting. Each one gets an hours-a-week number and a yes, no or not-yet on whether AI can take it. The map fits on one page. Most people are surprised by the total.
What's on the map.
The tasks
Every recurring job in the business, named plainly, with who does it now and how long it takes each week.
The hours
A total. Usually between fifteen and thirty hours a week in a business of five, most of it the owner's.
The order
Which to automate first, by hours saved against effort. The phone is nearly always first. Here's why.
The tools
What you've already got that it plugs into, and the one or two things you might be missing. Rarely anything to buy.
The price
A fixed monthly figure for the first build and a rough one for the rest, so you can decide with numbers.
The nos
The tasks AI shouldn't touch yet, and why. Judgement calls, relationships, the thing you're actually good at.
How it runs.
Book the call. Forty minutes, on the phone or over coffee in Melbourne. Within a week you have the map. You can take it anywhere, including to another automation agency; it's yours. Most people take it to us, because the first build on it is usually live inside a fortnight and the map's price comes off the bill.
After that, the map gets updated as things get built and the business changes. A small business that started with the phone is usually on to the inbox and the invoices within a quarter, and by then the owner has a Friday back.
Questions people ask.
What does an AI consultant actually do?
Finds where the hours go, and tells you which of them AI can take. One call, a look at how the work moves through your business, and a short written map: the tasks, the hours a week each one costs, what to automate first, and what it will cost. Then, if you want, we build it.
Is this a strategy deck or a build?
Both, but the deck is one page. Most AI consulting stops at a report you have to act on. Ours ends with the first automation running, because the map is only useful if someone goes fishing with it.
Do you consult for small businesses or just big ones?
Small ones, mostly: one to fifty people. Big companies have AI teams. A small business has an owner doing admin at night, and that's the problem worth solving.
Are you in Melbourne? Do you work in Sydney?
Melbourne, and everywhere else in Australia over a call. The consulting happens on the phone and inside your tools, so there's nothing that needs us in the room. If you're in Melbourne and want a coffee, that's fine too.
What if the answer is that AI won't help?
Then that's what the map says, and you've spent one call finding out. It happens. Some businesses have three hours of admin a week and a person who likes doing it. We'd rather tell you than sell you.
What does AI consulting cost?
The map is a fixed price, agreed before the call, and it comes off the first month if you go ahead with a build. No hourly billing, no retainer for advice. If we build, that's a fixed monthly price too.
Photo to come: Cal.
Calum Buchanan.
Melbourne. Ran the systems behind a services business, the phones, the invoices, the marketing, the reporting, and spent the last few years handing them to AI that works. This is that, for yours.