Episode overview

What does real influence look like? Forget follower counts. In this episode, recorded ahead of The Influencers 2026, Anthony Perl sits down with David Clelland, senior partner and co-founder of the AI strategy business OmniPulse AI. David calls himself a treasure hunter, not an AI strategist: he goes looking for where the gold is hiding in a business. The problem, he says, is that most businesses go looking in the wrong place. They buy the tools, skip the strategy, and end up with what he calls the AI graveyard.

Key talking points

• Why he is a treasure hunter, not an AI strategist: finding where the gold is in a business, not fitting tools into it
• Why so many AI projects fail, and why the failure is almost always upstream of the technology: no measurement before the work starts
• Why the problem the executives name is rarely the problem on the floor, and why the answer usually comes from the people doing the work
• The 15-minute task done twenty times a day beats the shiny one nobody touches: how to prioritise by time and frequency
• Personal AI and corporate AI are two different things, and why the distinction matters for a mid-sized business
• Why fixing one process just moves the bottleneck further on, and why that is a feature, not a bug
• It is a journey, not a point in time: starting with the business side, not the tools
• The promise that puts the risk on his own shoulders: six figures of hidden revenue, or he keeps working for free

About David Clelland

David Clelland is the senior partner and co-founder of OmniPulse AI, the Sydney AI strategy business. He spent 35 years building businesses that scale, long before AI was a headline, and the one he is proudest of took 14 years to build: a software business across Australia and New Zealand acquired outright by the Danish company Zensai in 2022. He holds an AI Strategy for Business Transformation certificate from Kellogg Executive Education, and he writes about AI accountability and governance in his newsletter, The Pulse. OmniPulse AI works with mid-sized businesses on a flat fee and a four week engagement, and guarantees to identify six figures of hidden revenue, or keep working for free until it does. OmniPulse AI is a Proudly Supported By sponsor of The Influencers 2026.

The Influencers 2026

The Influencers 2026 is one morning in Sydney: Wednesday 7 October 2026, 8.30am to 12.00pm, Northside Conference Centre, Crows Nest. The theme is there's more than one way to become influential, explored through five lenses: media, communication, marketing, leadership and business. Tickets and group bookings are available via influencers2026.com.au.

Links

• Listen to the episode: https://youtu.be/qv9-CRlfAn8
• The Influencers 2026: influencers2026.com.au
• OmniPulse AI: omnipulseai.ai
• Podcasts Done For You: PodcastsDoneForYou.com.au

#AI #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #TheInfluencers2026 #SydneyEvents #SmallBusiness

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