If your business still relies on you to chase the leads, write the content, follow up the quotes and hold the whole process together, that is exactly what we fix. Practical AI and automation, built around how your business actually works. No hype. No lock-in.
The marketing stops the moment you get busy. Content, ads and campaigns never go out on a steady rhythm.
See how we help →Calls, messages and after-hours enquiries slip through. By the time you reply, they have already gone elsewhere.
See how we help →Quotes and leads sit waiting. The follow-up that wins the work is the first thing to fall off when the day gets full.
See how we help →The same information gets typed into three different tools. Nothing flows, and nobody has the full picture.
See how we help →The way your business runs is too specific for the standard apps. You need something built around how you actually work.
See what we'd build →You know AI could help, but the options are overwhelming. Get a clear, plain-English read on where the fastest win is.
Take the 7-minute Check-Up →Pick the one closest to yours. We'll show you the kind of work we'd actually do, and where it would start.
Not seeing your business? Take the 7-minute Check-Up →
"The care is the easy part. It's the referrals, funding, reminders and follow-up around it that eat the day."
Where we'd start: a referral and intake assistant that collects everything your team needs before they have to chase it.
How we keep it safe: admin only, no clinical advice, and built privacy-aware.
"Your expertise is the value. Onboarding, document-chasing and follow-up shouldn't be."
Where we'd start: client onboarding and document-readiness automation, from first enquiry through to a signed engagement.
How we keep it safe: education and admin only, never automated advice, and compliance-aware.
"Quotes, after-hours enquiries and proposals all sit on you, and slow follow-up is costing jobs."
Where we'd start: a quote and proposal intake that captures clean detail and a follow-up that bridges your job system.
Who it's for: built for real volume (3 to 20-plus staff), not the one-person micro end.
"Every job is custom, so every quote starts with a dozen back-and-forth questions."
Where we'd start: a guided quote and estimating tool that gets you quote-ready specs the first time.
Why us: we build custom quoting and estimating apps, backed by enterprise solution-design experience.
"Your customers need a lot of hand-holding before they're ready to order."
Where we'd start: a brand-launch onboarding assistant that guides buyers to the right product and the next step.
Where it lands: founder-customer onboarding and cleaner e-commerce intake.
"Trials slip, members drift, and no system tells your team who to call today."
Where we'd start: a trial-follow-up and retention dashboard across your booking, payment and CRM tools.
Proof: built on the live 500-member gym Operations Platform.
"The same course questions, renewals and corporate bookings, over and over."
Where we'd start: a course-finder and corporate-booking assistant that routes enquiries cleanly.
Where it lands: high-volume enquiry and renewal-driven demand, handled without more admin load.
"You sell something that needs explaining, to buyers who need trust before they commit."
Where we'd start: a content and lead-nurture engine that turns your expertise into steady, on-brand output.
Proof: Symphony is our own B2B sales platform.
Whatever your business, the work falls into three jobs. We start with the one that's hurting most, build the right solution rather than the most complicated one, and connect it to the tools you already use.
The marketing that should bring work in stops the moment you get busy. We build the engine that keeps it going without you at the keyboard.
Enquiries slip through and follow-up never happens. We make sure every lead is caught, answered and chased, day or night.
The admin that keeps you at the desk until 10pm. We map what you actually do, then automate the parts that don't need a human, or build the app when nothing off-the-shelf fits.
Most websites just sit there. The visitor can't find what they need, the owner is asleep, so they leave and call someone else in the morning. One of the biggest reasons enquiries go cold is simply that people can't get a conversation started when they're ready to have it.
So instead of a dead page, give them a real conversation. They get their questions answered in your business's voice, late at night, on their terms. What they tell it lands with you, and you wake up to a warm lead you can call back already knowing their story.
It answers the questions buried three pages deep, qualifies the enquiry, and captures who they are and what they want. The summary comes through to you, so the first thing you do in the morning is call back someone who is already half-sold.
There is one running in the bottom-right of this page right now. It is the same kind we would build for you, in your business's voice.
Same idea, on the line. It greets the caller, answers what it can, and hands you the details of who called and why. No missed call goes to voicemail and dies there.
📞 Hear ours live: +61 468 083 267Ask "Jess" what we do, or how we would help a business like yours. About 60 seconds. You are speaking with an AI, and it will tell you so. Standard call rates apply.
Four platforms I've built, each solving a problem that off-the-shelf tools couldn't.
GNR8 turns one short brief into everything a small business needs to put in front of customers. Ads, story and teaching carousels, voiceover videos, guides and newsletters, all on brand, all honest, all download-ready at the exact size each platform wants. No blank canvas, no design skills, no agency wait. You describe what you want to say, and minutes later the whole set is ready to post. It is the Canva layer and the copywriter rolled into one, replaced by AI that already knows your brand, your voice and your offer.
Most owners are stuck between two bad options: pay an agency thousands a month and wait weeks for a handful of posts, or lose their own nights wrestling design tools and second-guessing whether it looks on brand. GNR8 removes both. And it does not stop at content. It is growing into the full engine - it finds the right buyers, builds the targeted Google and Meta audiences, and reaches the ones who never see an ad through direct, compliant outreach in the owner's own voice. Content that pulls customers in, outreach that goes and gets the rest, and every quote and number kept real, because the owner's reputation is the product.
See GNR8 →
Symphony is a sales workspace for complex B2B deals with autonomous AI agents running the prep work in the background. It captures every opportunity in one place: strategic objectives, buying committee, risks, value alignment, close plan. The agents work without being asked. Calendar scanning, customer research, tailored prep briefs delivered to the rep's inbox before meetings start. On demand, reps get a context-aware AI Coach and a research engine that turns a company name into a sourced account brief in under a minute.
Modern enterprise buying committees average nine-plus stakeholders. Purchase likelihood drops below 20% past eight. Most stalled deals don't lose on price. They lose because reps can't align the room internally. At the same time, reps lose hours every week to prep work that should be running on rails. Symphony reclaims that time. Every coaching answer, research brief, and meeting brief is grounded in the rep's real deal, not a polished impression of one.
Visit symphonyhq.ai →
Phoenix is an AI-powered job-search and outplacement platform that turns the application process into a coached, evidence-led workflow. It scans the live market against each candidate's profile, scores every role for fit, and generates tailored resumes and cover letters engineered to clear ATS filters for the specific role. Not a generic AI rewrite. A built-in consultant-candidate messaging system with shareable job cards keeps every coaching exchange tied back to the candidate's record.
Job search in 2026 is asymmetric. ATS gatekeepers reject most applications before a human reads them, and candidates in transition are fighting that filter alone. For candidates, Phoenix turns each application into a structured, evidence-backed submission with a measurably higher chance of reaching a hiring manager. For placement and outplacement agencies, it gives consultants a managed caseload, transparent candidate activity, and a coaching channel that replaces reactive weekly check-ins with steady visibility.
Phoenix site coming soon
The Operations Platform is a single workspace for business owners with staff teams, sitting above the systems they already use. It pulls live data from the tools running the business (booking system, lead CRM, payment platform, fitness app, whatever the operation depends on) and turns it into something the owner and team can act on. Owners see four or five real KPIs daily in plain language. Managers see what their team has and hasn't done. Tasks that get missed escalate automatically.
Most small and mid-sized businesses run on three or four tools that were never designed to talk to each other. None of them tracks whether the staff member actually called the trial member on day three, or whether the inactivity alert on a high-value customer was actioned. The gym build that shaped this platform is a good example: 500 members, four membership tiers, forty-six people in trial with no system telling staff who needed contacting. The Operations Platform closes that gap.
None of this means your business is broken. It means you're doing too much manually and there's a faster way. We hear these exact things every week from business owners across Australia. And we hear what happens when someone tries to fix it the wrong way. Stitching together five different tools with another monthly subscription doesn't solve the problem. It just moves it somewhere harder to see.
And you're not imagining the urgency. A 2025 national study of over 1,000 Australian SMEs found that 83% believe AI will impact their business within 12 months. Only 39% feel confident acting on it. Nearly half are experimenting with no formal plan. The biggest barrier after budget? Simply not knowing where to start. (Decidr / Nature, National AI Readiness Index 2025, n=1,042)
Agencies sell funnels. GoHighLevel resellers sell templates. Software vendors sell another subscription. AI consultants sell shiny tools. Most owners get sold a product when what they needed was someone to look at the business honestly and find the real bottleneck first.
A Current Affair ran a story on the worst of it: landing pages with spelling errors, fake reviews, owners locked into contracts they couldn't escape and chased by debt collectors when they tried. We've been calling that out for years. The owners who got hurt the most were the ones too busy running the business to look closely at what was being promised.
They ask what you want, then stitch together five tools with webhooks, Zapier and a CRM you didn't ask for. You get a big invoice, three new monthly subscriptions and a system only they can maintain. Six months later something breaks and you're back to square one. With a bill.
The work starts with understanding what's actually blocking your business. We talk about your team, your processes and what happens when you go on holiday. Then we build something that addresses the real problem, not just the symptoms. Something your people will actually use, and that you can understand and control.
If this sounds like your business, we'll be a good fit:
Clinics and allied health, trades at volume, custom manufacturers, professional and financial services, fitness and studios, training providers, product brands, B2B services and software.
We'll save us both the time if what you want is:
Most AI assessments quiz you on your tech stack and send you a sales pitch. Ours starts with your people, then your operations, then your tools. Because that's the order that actually matters.
Standardise how you capture customer enquiries. One central place instead of inbox, texts, and memory. This alone can save 3-5 hours per week.
Every engagement starts with understanding your business properly. Not your tech stack. What you do, who does it, where the bottlenecks are. We don't assume we know what you need. We ask, we listen, then we build.
We start by understanding where your time and money are actually going. What's manual, what's repetitive, what's falling through the cracks.
We agree on what's worth solving first and what success actually looks like. Before anything gets built.
We map the solution. The right tools, the right integrations, built around how your business actually operates.
We don't disappear after launch. We stay close, refine what needs adjusting, and make sure you're getting the outcome we promised.
Rick has a passion for getting it right. The added bonus is the technical background. He thinks through strategically how best to help the client.
Steve H.
Chief Product Officer, IMS
Rick has the unique ability to see the whole picture. He connects with users to understand the business problem and shape the best solution.
Andrew M.
Partner, Elysium Digital
Rick has excellent sales and entrepreneurial skills. We have been able to do a lot of good business together.
Martin M.
Owner, Meier Business Systems
I spent almost 25 years on the road. Enterprise sales across Asia Pacific. Designing solutions, delivering them, helping businesses grow.
What I didn't do was make it to enough birthdays. Enough family dinners. Enough walks on the beach. Enough movie nights on the couch where nobody needed me to be anywhere else.
I know the value of time more than most. Not in a productivity sense. In a life sense. The normal moments and the special ones. I missed too many of both.
That's why this work matters to me. When I help a business owner automate the admin that keeps them at their desk until 10pm, I'm not just saving them hours. I'm giving them back the things that actually matter. The things you can't invoice for and can't get back.
I know how hard it is to run a small business and the problems that come with it.
I started selling fruit off the back of a truck when I was 17. Then I joined the Army, where I was managing budgets up to $20 million. After that I've spent the last 27 years in implementation, sales, solutions, and leadership. Some of those roles meant expanding hardware and auction businesses. Others meant scaling software operations globally with companies like IBM and TechnologyOne in the mix. I've also managed a 30-person consulting firm delivering solutions across Asia Pacific.
More than half of those years were in implementation, pre-sales, and solution design. Works management, asset management, inventory, and field service systems. For hospitals, freight and transportation, power and water utilities, local councils, and businesses ranging from small operators to large enterprises. I designed the UX for three separate enterprise apps' first mobile rollouts, the ones maintenance crews, field service teams, and trades workers actually used out in the field. I designed maintenance and quoting systems used across entire state housing networks.
I've also spent time on the other side of those systems, running the operations they were built to support. Army workshops. Council workshops. P&L responsibility for trades teams. The profitability of operations that had to make money or close. I know what the people using these systems are dealing with, what they're responsible for, and what they need those systems to deliver.
For 15 years I designed solutions like these and handed them to development teams to build. That's how it had to work. A real application meant a real development team, a real budget, and timelines measured in months. Hundreds of thousands of dollars at minimum. Sometimes millions. Out of reach for most small and mid-sized businesses no matter how well the problem was scoped. AI changed that. Now I can scope the solution and build it myself, without a full development team behind me, which means small and mid-sized businesses get enterprise-grade design thinking at a cost and timeline that actually fits.
What most consultants don't have is the operator's perspective. I've sat through the late nights chasing things that should have been done. I've made the calls that didn't go well. I've had the weeks where everything piled up at once.
I'm based on the Mornington Peninsula. I work with small and mid-sized business owners across Australia, in person locally and on video everywhere else. If you're not sure where to start, or whether AI is even the right answer for your business, that's exactly the kind of conversation I want to have.
Rick van Driel, Automation Expert
Every business is different, so every solution is different. A chatbot for a physio clinic looks nothing like workflow automation for a trades company with 15 staff. Neither looks like a custom estimating app for a quoting business. It shouldn't cost the same either.
The honest answer: because the work varies. A simple FAQ chatbot is a very different build than a fully automated quoting and invoicing workflow.
Pricing depends on the complexity of what you need, how much customisation is involved, whether it's a one-off project or an ongoing service, and the level of support and refinement you want after launch.
We'll always walk you through what things cost and why before you commit to anything. No surprises. That's a promise, not a tagline.
Let's have a straight conversation about where AI can help and where it can't. No pitch deck. No pressure. Just practical answers.
No spam. No sales scripts. Just a real conversation when the time suits you.
Chat with our AI Coach to explore how automation, AI, and a better website could save you time and win you customers.
This is an example of what we build. Your AI coach would be tailored to your business, your brand, and your customers.