Operations Partner to Founder: Systems, AI Workflows, Delivery

ABOUT US A small South African financial services business, three lines. Outsourced CFO advisory delivered with junior analysts. Finance and insurance for businesses buying capital equipment. And an early-stage data product for credit insurers and banks. Team is a fractional sales lead on the product side, a sales lead on asset finance, two junior analysts, and specialist contractors. THE ROLE IN ONE LINE You start by organising me, and end by organising the system. Everything currently runs out of my head. In the first months you are close to me daily, keeping my diary, calendar and commitments in order, chasing what is outstanding, and holding the picture I cannot hold myself. That work is how you learn how the business actually runs. Then it shifts. What you learn gets built into workflows, AI tooling and documented process, so the system holds it instead of you or me. Less organising a person, more running a machine. WHAT YOU WOULD BUILD Meeting preparation, automated. Before every client meeting I need a brief: the numbers, the outstanding items, the issues to raise. Together we define what each type of meeting needs, then you build the workflow that produces it, so a brief arrives without me assembling it. Delivery preparation with the juniors. Standing preparation work runs on a defined checklist. You build the process, hand execution to the juniors, and follow up so it lands on time and complete. My involvement is review, not production. Deal flow, end to end. On the asset finance side, leads flow into the CRM, convert into quotes, and move through to funding without me tracking any of it. I hear about it in a summary, not by checking. Product build tracking. For the data product: task register, QA checklists, API and channel partner work, and how the CRM feeds into project delivery. Visible and current so development stays on track without me holding it in my head. Everything talking to each other. Three or four email accounts, the CRM, Notion, our calendars and documents. Connected so nothing is missed and only what genuinely needs me reaches me. WHAT YOU WOULD RUN Once built, you run it. The juniors are following up and closing their tasks, deals have a next step and an owner, nothing is stale, and I get one short picture a day: what moved, what stalled, and the few things that need a decision from me. You also organise my check-ins with the team, so coordination stops depending on me remembering. HOW THE WORK CHANGES Months one and two. Heavy contact with me. You learn how the business runs and how I prepare. We define the rules together and you build the first workflows. Months three to six. The systems carry it. Most of what used to reach me resolves against written process, automation and AI tooling. My involvement becomes the exception. Beyond. New work gets absorbed into the system rather than added to my desk. You decide what needs building next and advise on what we hire. HOW WE MEASURE IT One question each month: how much of this business ran without me? How many decisions now resolve against a written rule, how many days I could be absent with nothing stalling, and how much routine work runs on tooling rather than on someone's hours. WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR A system builder who is also genuinely organised. You should want to design how something works, and be the kind of person who keeps a diary and a task list clean while you do it. Real fluency with AI tooling, not a listed skill. We use Claude and Claude Code heavily in how we work. Experience with them is a strong advantage, and if you have built workflows with any AI tooling, tell us what you built. Judgement about what matters. The difference between what happened and what is worth surfacing. This is the hardest thing to find and the thing we will test. Spoken English we can follow easily. There is a short working session most days. Experience supporting a founder or executive over a long engagement rather than many short ones. Comfortable coordinating other people's work, since the juniors execute and you follow up. Notion, CRM and Google Workspace experience useful. Anyone capable learns the specific tools quickly. HONEST ABOUT MONTH ONE Month one is the assistant version of this job. Diary, calendar, inbox, chasing documents, populating records, sitting with me while I work through things. That is not a lesser stage, it is the stage where the knowledge transfers. If you want to arrive and immediately design systems, this will frustrate you. If you understand that you cannot build the system until you have run the mess, this is the right role. WHAT THIS ROLE IS NOT Not marketing, content or social media. No graphic design, SEO, e-commerce, bookkeeping or web development. PRACTICAL Hours: 30 to 40 per week, inside South African hours, 08:00 to 17:00 UTC+2. Short daily sessions with me at fixed times. Start: mid-September 2026. Intended as a long relationship, not a project. TO APPLY There are three short questions attached to this post. Please answer them properly, in two or three sentences each. We read those first. Then record a short video, one to two minutes, answering this: The first month of this role is diary, inbox and chasing documents while you learn how everything works. The months after that are building systems so that work disappears. Tell me how you would use that first month so the second phase actually happens. Loom or a phone recording. Unpolished is fine. Hearing how you think tells us both more than a written proposal. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT We shortlist from the answers and the video, speak to three people, then one small paid task at your rate before either of us commits. Real work, not a test exercise.