Business consultant for owners and executive teams, with AI where it helps.
For when the business has outgrown the way its work gets done. Find the leaks, cost them, and fix the ones worth fixing: AI where it helps, plain process where it doesn't.
Who it's for
Who brings in a consultant like this
- Owners whose business still runs through them: every exception, every approval, every "just check with the boss".
- Executive teams with AI on the agenda and no agreed first step.
- Businesses that bought the software and still do the work by hand.
- Leaders who want an outside view before a big systems or AI spend.
Who you'll work with
Cobus van Vuuren, directly. He runs the sessions and writes the plan himself. More about Cobus →
The work
Problems worth bringing in a consultant for
The owner is the bottleneck.
Decisions, approvals and client questions all route through one person. Map which ones need that person at all.
Enquiries wait.
A new enquiry sits until someone with authority gets to it.
Reporting built by hand.
The monthly numbers take days to assemble. They shouldn't.
Systems that don't talk.
The same information typed into three, four, six places.
Knowledge in one head.
When that person is away, the process stops.
Staff already using AI, with no rules.
Client data goes into tools nobody approved. Set what's allowed and what isn't.
Nobody knows where the human decides.
Split every AI job: the AI proposes, fixed rules enforce, a person signs off.
An AI decision that needs making properly.
Which jobs, which tools, which risks, in which order. And which ones to skip.
How an engagement runs
Four steps. The tool comes last.
Understand
How the business really runs, in your words. Who does what, where work waits, what still has to go through the owner.
Map and cost
Every leak gets a number: time at real rates, leads that go cold, work done twice. Now they can be compared.
Prioritise
Every change lands on two people: the client paying you, and the person doing the work. The changes that help both go first. The rest gets budgeted plainly, parked, or cancelled.
Build or hand over
We build what's worth building, or hand your team a plan they can run. Either way, it's yours.
Engagements are scoped around the outcome you need, never billed by the hour. Every engagement starts with one defined piece of work, and you decide what happens after it.
Ways to start
Pick the door that fits
For owner-run businesses: Business Systems Assessment
A fixed-price, once-off look at how the business runs, ending in a costed, ranked 90-day plan.
See the assessment →For leadership teams
The same method, scoped to your team and the size of the business.
Let's talk →Implementation
When the plan is clear, build the systems together, or hand them to your team to run.
See the work
What we've built, and what each system has been tested on.
See the builds →Who this isn't for.Businesses looking for someone to install a chatbot by Friday, or teams that haven't decided they want anything to change. Cobus will say so if that's where you are.
From the work
What the work turned up
Six systems, one enquiry.
A gutter installation business ran every job through six systems that didn't talk to each other. A single job got typed up to three times before the quote went out. Mapping it showed which steps were mechanical, which needed judgement, and that the monthly profit reconciliation alone took about a week.
The two-hour test.
37 of the 60 owners who answered this in our diagnostic said a new enquiry doesn't get a real reply within two hours unless they step in.
AI that didn't need to be there.
A daily automated task called an AI model every time it ran. The work was purely mechanical. Rebuilt without it, the monthly cost went to zero and the run time dropped from about two minutes to fourteen seconds.
The same thinking, applied to marketing.
Through RhinoBerry, Cobus's marketing agency: organic clicks up 79% in the 28 days after a schema and page-title rewrite, for a security group operating in seven countries. And Google Ads leads at R39.68 against an R80 target over four weeks, for a weight-loss coaching business.
Want this as a talk for your leadership team or business group?Speaking →
Common questions
Before you get in touch
- What does a business consultant do?
- Looks at how the work in a business moves and finds where it loses time, leads or decisions. Each leak gets costed. The ones worth fixing get fixed, in the order that pays back first.
- What does an AI consultant do?
- Works out which jobs in your business AI should do, which it shouldn't, and in what order, then sets the rules: what staff may use, where client data may go, and where a person signs off. A good one will also tell you where AI isn't worth it yet.
- Is this only about AI?
- No. AI is one tool. A lot of what gets fixed is process, handovers and the order things happen in. Where AI helps, it gets used.
- Do you work remotely?
- Yes. Most work runs remotely, with in-person sessions where they're worth the trip.
- How is consulting priced?
- Per engagement, scoped around the outcome, never by the hour. The Business Systems Assessment has a fixed price on its own page.
- Who owns what gets built?
- You do. What we build or write for you is yours to keep, even if you stop working with us. Our own tools and methods stay ours.
- Will you try to sell us software?
- No. There's no commission on the tools we recommend. If something is worth building or running for you, you'll know what it costs, and the decision is yours.
Your next move
Let's talk through your options
Tell Cobus what's going on. He replies himself, usually within one working day.
Talk to Cobus →