Operations
Your team is doing the systems’ job
Orders get keyed in twice and the Monday report is rebuilt by hand. Good people lose their week to copy and paste.
AI advisorySenior help to fix what’s slowing you down, without the full-time hire.
I’m James. I come in as your AI advisor or part-time head of digital. The slow bits are usually the same three: manual work, AI tools nobody uses, digital nobody owns. Most of that gets fixed without buying more AI. I’ll tell you which bits.
The track record
$113M
Annual online revenue at Baby Bunting, grown from a $56M base
$9M+
Above Kmart’s FY25 online trade budget
15+ years
Across retail, digital and technology
Who I’ve worked with and worked for.
01Where brands get stuck
Where good brands get stuck.
None of it looks dramatic on its own. Added up, it costs margin and a lot of good people’s time.
AI tools
AI tools nobody can explain
You’re paying for seats and a pilot stalled. Nobody can say what any of it changed.
AI advisoryLeadership
Digital with nobody steering
Agencies, platforms and data all moving at once, with nobody senior setting the order of priority.
Digital leadershipGrowth
Growth the back office can’t carry
More channels and more orders, run on the same spreadsheets. Scale that and you scale the chaos.
Digital leadership02Two ways I help
Pick a door.
Some work starts in one and spills into the other. Either way, you deal with one person.
03How I work
Three questions before anything gets built.
What does it move?
Sometimes it’s revenue or margin straight away. Often it’s the step before the money: hours back, systems that talk to each other, fewer errors. If we can’t name what it moves, it doesn’t get built.
Will your team use it?
The people doing the work help design it, test it and learn it. If it doesn’t fit how they work, it doesn’t go live.
Who owns it when I’m gone?
Every fix gets a named owner, clear controls and a simple way to review it. You keep running it without me.
04Who I’m not for
Not for the AI bro final boss.
You’ve met him on LinkedIn. He has fourteen agents, no process and a launch date of Friday. To be fair, he keeps people like me in work.
I’ve seen the same mistake with new platforms, apps and marketplaces: buying first, then working out what the business and its customers actually need.
If that’s the brief, I’m the wrong person to call.
Final bossLvl 99 · Every sector
The AI bro
Natural habitat: LinkedIn
Special moves
- Buys the tool, then looks for a problem
- Rebuilds the CRM on a weekend
- Announces it before it works
WeaknessA spreadsheet with the real numbers
05What you get instead
What you get instead.
Instead of
A tool picked before anyone understands the problem
You get
The problem understood and costed first, then every option weighed against it
Instead of
AI where a rule will do
You get
AI only where it earns its place
Instead of
A deck, then a disappearing act
You get
Hands-on help through to handover
Instead of
A junior doing the work
You get
Me, directly, on every engagement
06About James
Retail, from register to revenue.
I’ve worked my way up from the shop floor to owning digital P&Ls at major Australian retailers. So I know what a new system does to targets, the trading week and the people who have to use it on a Monday morning.
When we work together, you work directly with me.
More about JamesStart a conversation
Start with the problem.
Tell me what you want to improve, what you’ve tried and where you’re stuck. We’ll work out whether I can help and what a useful first step looks like.
Prefer email?
james.lewis@jamesmark.com.au