A local operator who builds the systems — and has spent 15 years doing it.
I'm Tom Topfer. I live in Sawtell with my wife and three young kids, and I build practical automation and business systems for businesses across the Mid North Coast. I'm not a typical "AI consultant" — I'm an operator who's spent fifteen years making businesses run better, and these days I use automation to do it faster.
I've worked across some very different worlds — disability services, commercial construction, aviation, agriculture, and now investment research. The common thread is that I've usually been the person figuring things out where the playbook doesn't exist yet, and solving problems without someone standing over my shoulder.
The commercial weight
At Nextt Group I started as the first business-development hire and grew qualified referrals by 250%, then became the commercial lead of a roughly $50M NDIS portfolio — where I integrated three acquisitions and standardised how the whole group quoted, scheduled and billed. That last part is really what I do: find where the work is being done by hand, and build the system that does it properly.
The automation part
I build automation every day — in tools like Claude Code, n8n, Make and Zapier. I've built an automated market-research tracker, an agentic tool that manages an expert network, and decision-support tools that let a small team operate like a much bigger one. Things that used to take a morning, I get through in a fraction of the time, without losing accuracy.
My one rule
Automation only matters when it demonstrably makes the business better. Something impressive in isolation is worse than useless — it eats the trust you need for the next build. So I start small, agree the number it has to hit, and prove it.
Where I look first
In most small teams, the real cost is hiding in plain sight — wherever data gets copied, retyped, or chased between systems by hand. It's usually invisible until you go looking. That's where I start.
Along the way I've picked up a Bachelor of Construction Management, a Commercial Pilot Licence, and an altMBA with Seth Godin — and earlier in life I ran multi-million-dollar construction projects, flew charters in remote WA, and worked cattle stations in outback Queensland. It's a roundabout path, but it's why I'm comfortable walking into almost any business and working out how it actually runs.
Mostly, I want to do good work close to home — with local businesses I can build a real relationship with, rather than spending all day on video calls. If your team is drowning in repetitive admin, there's a good chance I can help.
The first step is a free 15-minute call — no pitch, no lock-in.
Book a 15-min fit call