Founder note
AI is smart. It just doesn’t know what you know.
As a fractional CMO, context switching throughout the day is the biggest drain on my energy.
Different companies. Different priorities. Different strategies. Different decisions. Each time I switch, I have to think about each situation again, and that takes a lot of mental load that can turn into an executive function problem. Let me give you an example.
One day in early 2025 I had seven well-defined things to do, but by lunchtime I hadn’t finished one. I’d start something, think of something else, switch, and repeat. Deciding what to do is hard when you have too many commitments.
That morning was wasteful, exhausting, and unproductive and I wasn’t giving my best on any of the tasks.
After lunch, I opened ChatGPT and dumped the seven tasks into it. It helped me choose what to do first. It was like a weight had been lifted!
My mind had permission to ignore the other six things. Now I could focus.
I went away, worked for about 45 minutes, and came back with the most important item done. Then I did the second. And the third. My day was redeemed.
As I walked out of my office that evening, I felt great and thought, why can’t it be like this every day?
The next day I tried again but this time I gave it about 100 things from my full todo list.
ChatGPT croaked, suggesting trivial tasks instead of the bigger priorities I knew needed my attention.
The AI was smart — yes even 2 years ago. It just didn’t know what I knew.
Even today, AI can prioritize a short, well-defined list, but it can’t triage a life.
It doesn’t know why we made a decision three months ago. What I’d promised in the last meeting. How a client liked to communicate. Which priorities had changed. What we’d already tried. Or the hundreds of other pieces of context I carried around in my head.
I tried a number of solutions. In Notion and ClickUp, I spent too much time uploading notes, organizing tasks, and maintaining the system. The structure was never quite right and I was spending 20-30% of my time maintaining the system. Why does it always need another update?!?
“Just stick with it! When you finally get it just right, it’s amazing…” said a well-meaning friend.
I never got there after many months of trying.
I went back to the drawing board and I started designing a productivity and management system for myself. I had a few rules:
- No babysitting.
- Know everything.
- Know what’s important.
- Impact real work.
It took 2 years to build with many trials and mis-starts.
I’m proud to announce that it’s finally here.
It’s called Armbrain.
Armbrain learns the context behind my business and gives me tools to use that context—to prepare for meetings, understand and make decisions, plan, communicate, create, and execute.
It works.
Then other fractional CMOs wanted it.
Then CEOs started asking for it.
Today we’ve built Armbrain around the simple idea that you should only work on the most important things and let the system handle the rest.
From a high level, here’s how that works:
Armbrain develops an ongoing understanding of the people, priorities, decisions, commitments, conversations, and history behind your company—then puts that context to work through purpose-built tools for executives and inside the tools you already use.
Just remembering isn’t enough. Memory is a critical part of it, but it’s not the product.
We’re looking beyond memory and into optimization.
Armbrain helped me answer one thing: who could I become if I was focused on the right things all the time? The right client. The right project. The right decision. The right information. Every single time.
We’re starting with executives because that’s where I experienced the problem firsthand.
CEO. Owner operators. Entrepreneurs. Fractional executives like fCMOs, CFOs, COOs, etc.
Different jobs. Same underlying problem:
You switch context often and you know things your AI never will.
If that describes you, I invite you to give Armbrain a try. We would love to have your feedback in our growing community of like-minded executives. Setup takes about 30 minutes and I guarantee you’ll get at least 5 hours of wasted time back in the first week. And even more every week after.
Here’s to you making an outsized impact on your business and your life.
Arm your brain.