Practical advice, built on evidence.

You know your trade, but customers can't always see that before they buy, and selling harder doesn't build trust.

My major was social marketing: using marketing methods to change behaviour for the better, the way public-health and road-safety campaigns do. I bring the same idea to business. Give customers honest, useful information first, and the sales follow.

Berrima Diesel Service, our family business since 1956, is a textbook case. We share real information with people. It isn't about selling them something; it's about giving them the knowledge to make informed decisions. That trust is where the customers come from.

I have led marketing for more than 30 years across digital, print, social and brand strategy, for small and specialist businesses.

• Using behaviour-change methods from social marketing to plan a campaign.
• A content plan built on genuinely useful information, so customers come to trust you before they buy.
• Brand strategy and positioning for a small or specialist business.
• A website, social media and content plan that a small team can keep running.
• Customer communications, such as email and after-sales messages, that bring people back.

You have chosen music or sound for a venue, brand or product, but you don't know how it lands with the people who hear it.

My PhD at the University of Wollongong studies how the brain and heart respond to music, recording EEG, ECG, skin conductance, respiration and blood pressure together. I have also performed for more than 30 years and taught music in schools.

Through Sonic Reach, my music psychology and sound strategy consultancy, I apply that research to real spaces, brands and products.

• A music and sound direction for a cafe, bar, restaurant or other venue, with a written rationale and practical priorities.
• Listening sessions and talks for a team, conference or venue staff: the group hears the same scene with different soundtracks, and we look at what the research says.
• Research on musical identity for a brand or product, and on how your audience experiences sound.
• Designing and analysing listening studies that record the body's response, such as heart rate variability, EEG and skin conductance.
• Audience research and evaluation, including how people respond to AI-generated music.

You want AI to save time, but you aren't sure where it fits, or you don't want customer data leaving the building.

I help with both. I test models myself rather than taking benchmark claims at face value, because the useful question is whether a model behaves reliably inside your real workflow.

• Working out where AI saves time in your marketing, content and day-to-day admin, and where it isn't worth the trouble.
• Setting up AI assistants and agent workflows your team can use, with simple checks on the output before anything goes out.
• Planning and setting up private local AI on NVIDIA DGX Spark and other GB10-class machines, so your documents and data stay on hardware you own.
• Choosing an open-weight model by testing it on your own tasks before you commit to it.