Courage before capability

Stop
watching.
Start
building.

PROACTIVE Co helps founders, operators and marketing leaders build the courage and capability to integrate AI — not just talk about it.

Workshop → Why we exist
PROACTIVE Co
Hands-on workshop · May 2026
Build your own
AI assistant
Date
Friday 22 May 2026
Time
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Location
Burleigh Heads, QLD
Investment
Was $660$450 inc. GST
Early bird available.

Walk out with a working AI executive assistant built specifically for your business. This is not a lecture — you build it in the room, with hands-on support the entire time.

Only 6 seats. Small group. No one gets left behind.
Reserve your seat →
Why we exist
The barrier
to AI isn't
technical.
It's courage.

Most business leaders know AI is reshaping the way we work. Most are still waiting to feel ready.

"AI ate our lunch — not because we didn't know it was coming, but because we didn't act fast enough. We rebuilt from the ground up, and discovered something important along the way."

— Chris Hogan, Founder, PROACTIVE Co

Between December 2025 and February 2026, the marketing agency I founded 20 years ago lost 80% of its clients. We rebuilt. And what we learned through that experience is that the businesses who survive disruption aren't the most technically sophisticated — they're the most courageous.

PROACTIVE Co exists to give business leaders the courage to act, the capability to build, and the confidence to lead their teams through what's coming. Not through more content to consume. Through real work, with people who've already made the mistakes so you don't have to.

01
Courage
Acting before you feel ready
02
Reliability
Doing what we say we will
03
Excellence
No shortcuts, no half-measures
04
Empathy
We've been where you are
05
Discipline
Strategy before tactics, always
22 May 2026 · Burleigh Heads

Build your
own AI
assistant

Reserve your seat →
Date
Friday, 22 May 2026
Time
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM AEST
Location
MeMedia, 2/41a Tallebudgera Creek Rd, Burleigh Heads QLD 4220
Investment
Was $660$450 inc. GST
Early bird available.
Capacity
6 seats only

What you will build

  • 01
    A personalised AI executive assistant Interviews you, sets itself up around how you work, your priorities, and how you think.
  • 02
    A persistent business brain Gets smarter every session. Remembers context, builds on itself over time.
  • 03
    Connected tools you own Email, calendar, docs — your assistant takes action, not just chats. Wire in your accounts, swap them, add new ones whenever you want. No SaaS lock-in.
  • 04
    Custom skills for your workflows Tailored to your specific pain points and the work quietly costing you hours.

What you will learn

  • 01
    How AI assistants actually work The real framework — demystified, practical, immediately applicable.
  • 02
    Claude Code as your personal OS Set it up, run it, and make it the layer your working day runs through.
  • 03
    Building multiple AI team members Different AI roles for different functions — each with its own connected accounts. Personal inbox, agency inbox, client inbox, separated by design.
  • 04
    Why bespoke beats SaaS The shift from subscribing to software, to building tools you actually own.
1h

The framework

The why, the what, and the how. Context first — understand the construct before you build. No slides you'll forget. Real understanding you'll use.

2h

Guided build

Both facilitators in the room. Your questions answered in real time. You leave with a working assistant — not a half-finished prototype.

Who this is for

You don't need to be technical.
You need to be willing.

Agency owners and consultants who want AI working for them — not just chatting at them.

SMB founders and operators who need to do more with less, without compromising on quality.

Marketing professionals who need to show their team — and their leadership — what's actually possible.

Corporate and enterprise leaders who are done watching from the sidelines and ready to lead the shift inside their organisation.

Six seats. Two facilitators. No one gets left behind.

Your facilitators

Direct access.
Real experience.

Gareth Rydon
AI systems builder

Gareth Rydon

AI systems builder

The architect behind the executive assistant framework you'll be building. Gareth designed this system from the ground up — he knows where it breaks, how to make it sing, and how to adapt it to almost any business context.

Chris Hogan
AI operations & marketing advisor

Chris Hogan

AI operations & marketing advisor

25+ years of marketing leadership. Author of Building Brands On Purpose. Currently building AI-powered operations for businesses across multiple industries. Chris brings the strategic lens — not just how to build it, but how to use it to grow and lead.

What to bring

Come prepared.
Leave with
something real.

💻
Your laptop

Mac or PC. Either works. Come charged and ready to build.

🔑
Claude Pro or Max

Your Claude subscription. Don't have one yet? We'll help you set it up on the day.

📋
Pre-workshop guides

Sent to you immediately after booking. Optional — you can also start from scratch on the day.

Workshop testimonials

What workshop attendees
think of their experience.

Common questions

"Hasn't Claude.ai
caught up?"

Partly. And that's exactly why this workshop matters more now, not less. Here's what's actually different.

I already use Claude.ai. Isn't this the same thing?+

They look similar. They're different products doing different jobs.

Claude.ai is a chat. You go there, ask things, get answers. It's good — memory, connectors, Projects — and for casual use it's often enough.

Claude Code is infrastructure. It runs on your machine. The files it produces, the memory it keeps, the agents you build, the automations that fire on events — all of it lives in your filesystem, not Anthropic's. You can grep your AI's brain, version-control it, back it up, hand it to a colleague.

The shorthand: Claude.ai is the AI you visit. Claude Code is the AI you keep.

Can I run different agents for different clients or brands?+

Yes — and for agency owners, consultants, and anyone running multiple businesses, this is often the single biggest reason they leave the Claude desktop app behind.

In Claude Code you can stand up multiple agents, each connected to its own set of Google accounts (or any other tools). One agent is hooked into your personal Gmail. Another reads your agency inbox. Another talks to a specific client's Drive and Calendar. You invoke them by name, and each one only ever sees its slice of the world.

The Claude desktop app connects to one Google identity per connector at a time. If you manage multiple businesses or hold separate inboxes for personal, agency, and client work, you're signing in and out — or you accept that one connected account sees everything.

That separation isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between an AI assistant and AI staff.

Why Cursor or VS Code? Can't I just use the Claude desktop app?+

You can run Claude Code from a plain terminal — an IDE isn't strictly required. We use Cursor (or VS Code) because the workshop's whole point is that your AI is a set of files on your computer. An editor with a file tree makes that real:

  • You watch memory entries get written.
  • You open the agent definitions yourself.
  • You edit your own slash commands.
  • You commit your assistant to git like any other project.

The Claude desktop app hides all of this. That's fine for chatting — but it means you never internalise that you actually own the infrastructure. Six months from now, when Anthropic ships something new or you want to swap models, the difference between "I have a chat history" and "I have a directory of files I control" becomes very real.

Friday 22 May 2026

Ready to stop
watching and
start building?

Six seats. Small group. Real outcomes.
When they're gone, they're gone.

Was $660$450
inc. GST · Burleigh Heads QLD · 3 hours
Early bird available.
Reserve your seat →

MeMedia · 2/41a Tallebudgera Creek Rd, Burleigh Heads QLD 4220