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The moment that changed financial planning forever.And the one happening now.Before planning software, advisors built cl...
09/06/2026

The moment that changed financial planning forever.

And the one happening now.

Before planning software, advisors built client projections by hand.

Mortality tables. Compound interest. Rand-for-rand portfolio modelling.

From scratch. In spreadsheets — or before that, on paper.

A comprehensive retirement plan took 6–8 hours to draft.

Manual. Error-prone. Every firm doing it the same slow way.

Then LifeWise and the planning platforms came.

Same plan. 45 minutes. Compliant. Consistent.

The advisors who adapted built bigger books. The ones who didn't found themselves competing on the wrong thing.

We're here again.

Right now for CFPs and FSPs in SA:

— Client review packs: auto-generated from portfolio data and last meeting notes
— FAIS record-keeping: logged and structured during the meeting, not after
— Retirement projections with scenario modelling: draft output in under 5 minutes
— FSP reporting: non-judgement components pre-drafted before you touch them

The judgement is still yours. It always has been.

But the 8 hours of preparation that surrounds every judgement call?

That changes now.

I built the tool I wish someone had given me 3 years ago. It's live now.When I started diagnosing my own business, I did...
08/06/2026

I built the tool I wish someone had given me 3 years ago. It's live now.

When I started diagnosing my own business, I didn't have a framework.

I just knew something was off.

Always busy, never ahead. Capable team, but everything still ran through me.

It took 6 months of manual work to figure out what the diagnostic does in 10 minutes.

20 questions across the 4 systems that determine whether your practice runs on leverage — or personal bandwidth.

Intelligence Capture
Does your firm remember what it learns, or does everything live in people's heads?

Decision Speed
Can decisions happen at the right level without you as the bottleneck?

Process Independence
Do your processes require your physical presence to function?

Time Reclamation
Where is your highest-cost time actually going?

Your score out of 200 shows which system to fix first — and what the gap costs in rands.

60–100: foundations exist but aren't connected. You're working harder than you need to.
100–150: real systems in 2–3 areas. Specific fixable gaps. Audits find R20k–R50k/month here.
150+: running lean. The conversation shifts to what to build next.

Free. 10 minutes. Instant results.

→ https://vist.ly/56yqh

(Yes. This is the thing I've been building. It's live.)

Five things SA professional services owners can automate this week.No AI background needed. No project. No consultant.1....
08/06/2026

Five things SA professional services owners can automate this week.

No AI background needed. No project. No consultant.

1. Record your next client meeting with Fathom (free)

Instant transcript. Action items. Decisions. Follow-ups.

Send the summary to the client as your official attendance notes.

Never manually write meeting notes again.

Time saved: 25–40 minutes per meeting.
At R1,500/hr: R625–R1,000 per meeting.

2. Set a WhatsApp Business auto-response

Every after-hours enquiry gets an instant substantive reply with your intake link.

Takes 10 minutes to set up.

78% of clients buy from whoever responds first. After-hours is your biggest gap.

3. Write your first decision filter

Not software. A one-page document.

"If a client asks X, the answer is Y. If Z, direct them to [person]."

Give it to your team.

You've just removed yourself from 30% of your routine email.

4. Draft your next standard letter in Claude or ChatGPT (free)

Demand letter. Client update. Tax query response.

Paste your notes. Get a working first draft. Edit for 5 minutes. Send.

Time saved: 45 minutes minimum per letter.

5. Run the time arbitrage calculation on next week's calendar

Every task: what does it cost at your billing rate? What would outsourcing or automating it cost?

The tasks with the biggest gap go first.

None of these require a big commitment. They require 30 minutes this week.

Which one are you starting with?

In 5 years there will be two types of professional services firms in SA.The ones that figured this out in 2026. And the ...
07/06/2026

In 5 years there will be two types of professional services firms in SA.

The ones that figured this out in 2026. And the ones that didn't.

That's not hype.

Think about how quickly firms that adopted practice management software in 2012 pulled away from the ones still on paper files in 2018.

AI is that gap. But 3x faster.

The firms systematising AI adoption in the next 6 to 18 months will carry a structural cost advantage that compounds over years.

Not because AI is magic.

Because compounding efficiency does what compounding interest does: the longer you run it, the bigger the gap becomes.

Here's the honest question.

How many hours per week are you personally doing work that shouldn't require you?
How many of your processes live only in your head?
How many decisions still need your sign-off that your team could handle with better documentation?

Be audit-honest. Not optimistic-busy-person honest.

The diagnostic scores you on exactly these questions. 20 of them. Out of 200.

Above 100: you're ahead of most practices your size.
Below 80: you've already got a competitive problem. You just haven't felt it yet.

10 minutes. Free.

→ https://vist.ly/56vqx

There was a moment when legal research changed forever.Most SA attorneys still remember where they were.Before LexisNexi...
07/06/2026

There was a moment when legal research changed forever.

Most SA attorneys still remember where they were.

Before LexisNexis and Jutastat, legal research meant days in a law library.

Physical reporters. Manual indexes. Handwritten citations.

A thorough research memo could take a week.

Then the databases came.

Full-text search across every SA judgment ever written. In minutes.

The attorneys who adapted built the best practices.

The ones who resisted watched their juniors outperform them within two years.

Not because the juniors were smarter.

Because they had 40 hours back.

We're here again.

Right now in SA legal practice:

— Section 129 letters, demand notices, standard breach letters: first draft in 8 minutes
— Client attendance notes from a Zoom call: formatted, filed, sent in 10 minutes
— Residential lease review: non-standard clauses flagged in 12 minutes, not 2 hours

I'm not saying AI replaces legal judgement.

LexisNexis didn't replace legal research — it made the researcher 10x more effective.

This is that moment again.

Sage just added AI to your accounting software.Here's what that actually means for SA practices.In March 2026, Sage laun...
06/06/2026

Sage just added AI to your accounting software.

Here's what that actually means for SA practices.

In March 2026, Sage launched AI features for SA accounting firms.

The software you're probably already paying for.

It now auto-categorises transactions, drafts reconciliation notes, and flags anomalies before you see them.

This matters. Not because it's magic.

Because it signals something: the baseline expectation for practice efficiency just moved.

Firms adopting this will process month-end 40% faster.

They'll carry capacity you don't carry.

They'll price sharper in a market where you're still spending 4 hours on what they do in 90 minutes.

This is the actual business case for AI in professional services right now.

Not "transform your business" hype.

Just: the tools exist, the firms using them are pulling ahead, and the ones not using them will feel it by Q4.

The interesting question isn't whether to adopt AI.

It's where in your specific practice it gives you the most leverage first.

That's what the diagnostic is built to answer. → https://vist.ly/56tqy

There was a moment when Excel changed accounting forever.We're at that moment again — except the gap is bigger.Before VL...
06/06/2026

There was a moment when Excel changed accounting forever.

We're at that moment again — except the gap is bigger.

Before VLOOKUP, accountants cross-referenced data by hand.

500 rows on Sheet 1. 300 on Sheet 2.

You'd scroll. Check. Type. Check again.

Hours of work. Constant errors. Just how it was done.

Then VLOOKUP happened.

A task that took 3 hours took 8 minutes.

Accuracy up. Stress down. Anyone who didn't learn it watched their colleagues get promoted first.

Nobody called it "transformative technology" at the time.

They just called it Tuesday.

We're at that exact moment again.

Monthly management account drafts? Writing themselves from your data.
Client queries on standard matters? Answered before you've opened the email.
Staff onboarding documentation? Generated from your own notes in 40 minutes.

I know some of you are thinking: "But I'm not a tech person."

That's exactly what people said about VLOOKUP in 1995.

You learned it because the alternative was too expensive.

This is the same moment. The math is just bigger.

Here's how to calculate what your time is actually worth — and what you should never touch again.It's called the time ar...
05/06/2026

Here's how to calculate what your time is actually worth — and what you should never touch again.

It's called the time arbitrage calculation. Run it at least once.

Your billing rate: R1,500/hr
The task you're doing right now: formatting a monthly report
What it costs to outsource: R200/hr

Every hour you spend on that report costs you R1,500 in billing capacity.
Outsourcing it costs R200.
The arbitrage: R1,300 per hour — in your favour.

Now run it for everything on this week's calendar.

— Updating a client spreadsheet: R1,500 vs R80/hr admin
— Typing standard client updates: R1,500 vs R150/hr
— Chasing outstanding documents: R1,500 vs R200/hr
— Month-end management accounts: R1,500 vs R400/hr contractor

The math doesn't care how you feel about admin.

If you're billing at R1,500/hr and doing R200/hr work, you're not being productive.

You're being expensive.

Multiply it: R1,300 × 10hrs/week × 52 = R676,000/year in opportunity cost.

That's not a productivity problem. That's a strategy problem.

AI makes this 10x more powerful — it does R200/hr work at R20/hr.

I built a 10-minute diagnostic that shows you exactly where your firm's biggest arbitrage is.

Free. No sales call. Instant results.

→ https://vist.ly/56qpp

The question I get most often, almost word-for-word, is this."But what about my clients' data? Doesn't AI mean sending e...
05/06/2026

The question I get most often, almost word-for-word, is this.

"But what about my clients' data? Doesn't AI mean sending everything off to a server somewhere?"

It's a fair question. Especially under POPIA. Especially if you're an attorney, an accountant, or a financial advisor with a duty of confidentiality.

Here's how I think about it.

The audit doesn't move your data anywhere. It looks at your workflows, not your files. We're asking "which 20 minutes of your Tuesday is being lost to a manual process", not "give me a copy of your client database".

When we do recommend AI in the final plan, the tool choice goes through a privacy filter first. Locally hosted where possible. SA-resident hosting where it matters. Anonymisation rules built in. Audit trails for compliance officers. Not "the cheapest tool that looks fancy on LinkedIn".

POPIA isn't the obstacle to AI in your practice. Bad implementation is.

You didn't build a practice to spend your Fridays answering the same email for the third time this week.I speak to a lot...
04/06/2026

You didn't build a practice to spend your Fridays answering the same email for the third time this week.

I speak to a lot of SA business owners.

Accountants. Attorneys. Financial advisors.

Practice owners running anywhere from 5 to 50+ staff.

Almost all of them describe the same thing — without having a name for it.

The email that only they can answer.
The decision that only they can make.
The process that falls apart if they're not in the building.

That's not a people problem.

That's a systems problem.

There's a name for it: a time leak.

It's where your firm's most expensive resource — your time, at your billing rate — quietly gets consumed by work that doesn't require your billing rate.

A time leak doesn't feel dramatic.

It feels like a Wednesday.

You're busy. Things get done. But nothing moves forward. And you're still the last one to leave.

Most practice owners I know have been living with this for years.

Not because they lack discipline.

Because they've never been shown exactly where it's happening — or what it's costing.

That's what this week's posts are about.

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