By introduction
A person who attends to everything. The one in the office 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 the company
you’re becoming.
We spend time learning how your company actually runs. Then we build you assistants that know it — your operations, your correspondence, your files, your people. They are constructed, not configured. There is no version of them for anyone else.
A TuesdayThe day‑book
Tuesday
What it did while the team got on with the work.
Every factotum keeps a day‑book. Nothing below was instructed on the day. It was all understood beforehand, in the conversation that started the engagement.
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05:58
Overnight correspondence read across the shared inboxes. Two hundred and six items. Six of them need a person.
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07:15
Thursday reconciled across three diaries. The two o’clock and the half past could not both be true. Moved the second, and told them why.
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09:40
Last month’s invoices raised and put in front of Naledi for approval. Not sent to the clients.
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11:02
Erasmus contract, third revision. Changes marked against the version legal signed off. Clause 14 is not what was agreed on Friday.
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13:20
Johannesburg flights held for the sales team on the 19th. Not booked. The MD said to decide after the board call.
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15:47
Lindiwe passes five years with the firm on the ninth. Someone will want to mark it.
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16:30
Follow‑ups drafted to the three clients who have not replied. Sitting in the drafts folder, unsent.
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18:10
Nothing further requires a person today.
It drafts. Your people send. A factotum that acts on the company’s behalf 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 few days with the people who run things. How the company actually works, rather than how the org chart says it does. What you would hand over tomorrow. What must always stay with a person. Who may act on the company’s behalf, and who may not. Most of the work happens here.
Construction
Your factotums are built to what we learned — one, or several, wherever the company needs them. Each is given your systems, your obligations, your idiom, and the boundaries of its own authority. You see them working before you rely on them, and each earns its responsibilities rather than arriving with them.
Care
They are maintained by the people who built them. Your company changes; so do they. 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 they can do.
It is who else can read them. Your factotums will hold your correspondence, your contracts, your numbers and a good deal of what the company has 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 company’s factotums can reach another’s. There is no shared pool and no cross‑client index.
- iii
Nothing you give them is used to train a model. Not ours, and not anyone else’s.
- iv
They draft and prepare. They do not send, sign, pay, or commit the company to anything without a person.
- v
One person holds the keys, and your people will have spent days 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 companies, and not others.
This is for
- Professional practices, founder‑led companies, established SMEs, and larger firms with real operational weight.
- Companies where the work has outgrown the people running the back office.
- Companies where discretion is not optional — legal, medical, financial, or simply private.
- Companies that intend to keep the same assistants for years, and want them to know the business by then.
This is not for
- Companies that would like to try an AI tool and see how it goes.
- Companies hoping to do this inexpensively. It is not, and the price is the least interesting thing about it.
- Companies looking to cut headcount. A factotum frees your people; it does not replace them.
- Companies that want 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 offices or ours.