By introduction
A person who attends to everything. The one in the household who knows where each thing is, what was promised, and to whom — and who has usually dealt with it before being asked.
From the Latin fac totum: do everything.
Built for one person.
That person is you.
We spend a day learning how your work actually runs. Then we build you a private assistant that knows it — your correspondence, your diary, your files, your people. It is constructed, not configured. There is no version of it for anyone else.
A TuesdayThe day‑book
Tuesday
What it did while you were in theatre.
Every factotum keeps a record. Nothing below was instructed on the day. It was all understood beforehand, in the conversation that started the engagement.
-
05:58
Overnight correspondence read. Two hundred and six items. Six of them need you.
-
07:15
Thursday reconciled. The two o’clock and the half past could not both be true. Moved the second, and told them why.
-
09:40
Last month’s invoices raised and put in front of Naledi for approval. Not sent to the clients.
-
11:02
Erasmus contract, third revision. Changes marked. Clause 14 is not what you agreed on Friday.
-
13:20
Johannesburg flights held for the 19th. Not booked. You said you would decide after the board call.
-
15:47
Your mother’s birthday is on the ninth.
-
16:30
Follow‑ups drafted to the three who have not replied. Sitting in your drafts, unsent.
-
18:10
Nothing further requires you today.
It drafts. You send. A factotum that signs your name without asking is not an assistant — it is a liability, and we will not build you one.
The engagement
Three stages. The first is a conversation.
Consultation
A day, occasionally two. How your week actually runs, rather than how it appears in the diary. What you would hand over tomorrow. What you would never hand over. Who else may speak on your behalf, and who may not. Most of the work happens here.
Construction
Your factotum is built to what we learned. It is given your systems, your obligations, your idiom, and the boundaries of its own authority. You see it working before you rely on it, and it earns each new responsibility rather than arriving with them.
Care
It is maintained by the person who built it. Your practice changes; so does it. When something breaks, you telephone one number and a person who knows your setup answers, rather than a support queue.
Discretion
The question is not what it can do.
It is who else can read it. Your factotum will hold your correspondence, your diary, your documents and a good deal of what you have not finished thinking. Here is the arrangement, in plain terms, before you ask.
- i
Your data lives in a database of its own, encrypted at rest, hosted in a South African region.
- ii
No client’s factotum can reach another’s. There is no shared pool and no cross‑client index.
- iii
Nothing you give it is used to train a model. Not ours, and not anyone else’s.
- iv
It drafts and prepares. It does not send, sign, pay, or commit you to anything without you.
- v
One person holds the keys, and you will have spent a day with him before he does.
- vi
Under POPIA, Creative CTO (Pty) Ltd acts as operator. A written processing agreement precedes any work.
- vii
When an engagement ends, your data is returned to you and destroyed here. You will be shown the certificate.
Suitability
It suits some people, and not others.
This is for
- Advocates, surgeons, partners, principals, founders.
- People whose hour is worth considerably more than the retainer.
- People who have never quite justified an executive assistant — or have one, and need her freed from the administration.
- People who intend to keep the same assistant for years, and want it to know them by then.
This is not for
- Anyone who would like to try an AI assistant and see how it goes.
- Anyone hoping to do this inexpensively. It is not, and the price is the least interesting thing about it.
- Teams. A factotum serves one principal. That is the whole idea.
- Anyone who wants to configure it themselves. That is a different product, and it already exists.
Request a consultation
Tell us what you would hand over first.
We reply to every enquiry within two working days. If it is a fit, the first meeting is an hour, at your rooms or ours.