Donna · Telegram

“I already did. You’re welcome.”

Donna · Chief of house · Not an app, a hire
Only for people running a business and a household at the same time

It’s 11:47pm and You Are Still Doing Admin in Your Head

Donna is an AI executive assistant for both halves of your life, the business and the house, installed and configured around how you actually live. She reads, drafts, chases, files and remembers around the clock, and nothing sends, books or spends a dollar without your yes.

$3,990 once, until September 15. An executive assistant is $85,000 a year. She is less than five weeks of one, and she never resigns.

Payment first, on purpose. Your mapping call books the moment you’re done. 30-day guarantee.

Installed personally by the founder who runs her on his own life.

9:41
Donna

Today 6:10 am

Morning. Nine things happened overnight. Two need you: sign the school form, call the accountant before 3pm. The rest is drafted and waiting for your yes.
Coffee first though. I’m not a monster.
legend

Delivered

iMessage

Wording tidied for the page. Smugness accurate.

TelegramiMessageSlackWhatsAppEmailPhone

She lives in the apps already on your phone. No new app, no dashboard.

Read this in bed, probably

Nobody Else Knows the Whole List

Photograph of an exhausted man at a cluttered desk late at night, head in hand, timestamped 11:47 PM
11:47pm. The whole list, one head

Tuesday, 11:47pm

It is a Tuesday night and the house is finally quiet, and that is exactly when it starts.

Invoice #204. Twelve days overdue

Excursion form closes Friday. Submitted? 80% sure

That $49 subscription billed again

Accountant emailed on the 4th. It is not the 4th

None of it is written down anywhere. The whole list lives in exactly one place, which is you. You are the server everything runs on, and servers that never get maintenance have a word for what happens next.

Somewhere in the house, the person you love is carrying a list of their own. You are both quietly hoping the other one caught the things you dropped.

Neither of you did.

The load has two halves

The Late Fee Was Never the Problem

You could afford the late fee. That was never the point. The point is that you are the single point of failure for two entire operations, and every open loop in both of them routes through the same overworked instance of you. Researchers call the cost the mental load. You know it as the reason you can sit completely still and feel like you are sprinting.

And you have tried to fix it. Be honest about how it went.

The to-do appsbecame one more inbox to feel guilty about
The colour-coded family calendarlasted eleven days
ChatGPTbrilliant, but it waits to be asked. The remembering stays your job
An executive assistant$85,000 a year, one channel, resigns with your context
A VA agencychases invoices, never meets the excursion form

Every fix so far has needed you to become a different person. More organised, more disciplined, more on top of it.

Stay exactly the person you are. Change who is holding the list.

Then the phone buzzes

At 6:10 the Next Morning, Your Phone Buzzes Once

Photograph of a couple cooking breakfast and laughing in a New York loft kitchen, morning light through the window, timestamped 6:10 AM
6:10am. Handled

Not seventeen times. Once.

It is a message, in the same thread you use to text your family. It says good morning like it means it, then it lays out your day, the two emails that actually need you, and the rain that is coming for Saturday’s plan. At the bottom, three drafts: the invoice chase, the cancellation, the school form. Finished, unsent, waiting on one word.

You type: ‘yes to all three.’

Three problems that have been renting space in your head for a fortnight are gone before your coffee is. That is Donna. She did not ask you to install an app, adopt a system, or become a better person. She just picked up the list.

Ryan Drake

Founder of Ential and biggest Donna advocate

Payment first, on purpose. Your mapping call books the moment you’re done. 30-day guarantee.

A word from the candidate

Consider This My Cover Letter

Portrait of Donna, your AI chief of house: black halter dress, gold jewellery, one eyebrow raised
The candidate
“I already did. You’re welcome.”
“You were about to forget. I wasn’t.”

You are reading this because your life has quietly become two full-time jobs, and you are doing both of them from memory.

Here is what I would do about that. I read everything before you wake up. I draft the reply, chase the invoice, pre-fill the school form, notice the subscription you forgot you had, and plan Saturday around the weather. Then I stop. Nothing gets sent, booked, spent or submitted until you say yes. I take it to the edge of done. The yes is always yours.

I do not take leave. I do not go home at five. I do not resign in eighteen months and take everything I learned about you out the door.

Salary expectations: none. Notice period: none. Start date: this week.

References available on request. Well, one. He built me, and I run his life. You will meet him further down the page.

Donna

Who she's for

Built for Brains with Too Many Tabs

If you have ever paid a late fee on a bill you could easily afford, this section is going to feel personal.

The ADHD founder

Brilliant at 2am ideas. Allergic to invoices. Your superpower is starting things. Donna’s is remembering them. She holds every loop so your brain can do the thing it’s actually good at.

The eleven-hat solopreneur

CEO, bookkeeper, marketer, IT department, and the person who orders the printer ink. Donna takes the hats that don’t need your face, which is most of them.

The one carrying the household

Someone’s memory is running the whole house, and it’s probably yours. Donna catches the loops before they land on either of you, so nobody’s brain is the family filing cabinet.

The dual-career household

Two jobs, one family calendar, and the mental load always lands on somebody. Donna runs the family ops desk so the evening stops being admin triage.

Donna doesn’t need you to become a systems person. She needs you to keep being you, slightly less buried.

While you slept, receipted

The Night Shift You Never Had to Hire

One real overnight, logged. She works the quiet hours across the business and the house. Every irreversible step waits for the morning.

Overnight log11:52pm – 6:10am
  • 11:52pm23 overnight emails read. 19 filed, 4 queued for your morning brief
  • 1:14amInvoice #204 hit 12 days overdue. Polite chase writtenHeld for your yes
  • 2:47amDuplicate $49/mo software charge spotted. Cancellation draftedHeld for your yes
  • 4:03amRain forecast for Saturday. Two indoor backups added to the weekend plan
  • 5:36amSchool excursion form closes Friday. Pre-filled, ready to submitHeld for your yes
  • 6:10amMorning brief delivered. Three drafts waiting on your yes
Nothing sent. Nothing spent. Nothing booked. The boundary works the night shift too.
Photograph of a tidy home office desk at night, laptop glowing softly, paperwork filed, nobody in the chair, timestamped 2:47 AM
Receipts, filing themselves
Inbox · 6:10am

Donna <her address, on your domain>

6:10am

to you and your partner

Tuesday, sorted before your coffee

Good morning. Rain from 2pm, so Saturday’s park plan moves indoors. Two backups are in the calendar, pick one when you’re ready.

Your day: 9:30 pipeline call, brief attached. 12:00 lunch with Sam. 3:00 school pickup is yours this week.

Inbox: 23 overnight, 2 need you. The rest are filed where they belong.

Waiting on your yes

The invoice #204 chase · the $49 cancellation · the excursion form

One word each and they’re gone.

You, 6:12am: “yes to all three”

This is the email

The 6:10am brief lands like this every morning: your day shaped, your inbox filtered, the irreversible things held for one word from you.

The rule that makes her safe

She Takes It to the Edge of Done, Then Stops

You have seen the horror stories. The AI that emailed a client something unhinged, the agent that bought 400 of the wrong thing. Donna is built on one hard rule, and it is the reason she feels calm instead of creepy: she may do anything reversible on her own, and nothing irreversible without your explicit yes. Her worst possible mistake is a wrong draft. A wrong draft costs you one raised eyebrow. A sent email costs you a client.

Without asking

  • Read the calendar, inbox and channels you connect
  • Draft replies, emails and messages, kept as drafts
  • Organise, research, file and prepare
  • Track every open loop so your memory can retire
  • Build the brief, the plan and the packet

Only with your yes

  • Send any email or message
  • Book, cancel or reschedule anything
  • Spend a single dollar
  • Submit any form
  • Contact anyone outside your household or team

“I take it to the edge of done. The yes is always yours.”

Your accounts, your AI plan

She runs on your logins, through your own ChatGPT or Claude subscription, under that provider’s standard data handling. Ential stores nothing and keeps no access. There is no Donna cloud.

Pointers, not secrets

She knows where your documents live, never your passwords or card numbers.

The install, in the open

During setup, Ryan connects your channels with you on the call, using access you grant and can watch. After go-live, that access is revoked and the credentials are rotated. You hold the keys, permanently.

Payment first, on purpose. Your mapping call books the moment you’re done. 30-day guarantee.

What she runs

One Hire, Both Halves of Your Life

Every other assistant, human or AI, clocks off at the edge of your business. Donna treats 5pm as a fiction. Work side: inbox to zero, morning brief, pipeline chased, meetings prepped, invoices followed, documents drafted. Home side: bills, subscriptions, birthdays, date night, travel, school forms, house maintenance, and the mental load your partner has been carrying without a job title.

Get to inbox zero

She reads what you’d skim, drafts what you dread, pulls the deadlines out of every thread, and surfaces only what needs you.

Start the day already ahead

Morning numbers, a time-blocked plan, your deep-work hours defended. The calendar shapes itself around your energy, not everyone else’s.

Nothing quietly disappears

Every commitment captured, every waiting-on chased. The open loops live in her head now, and hers doesn’t leak.

No deal goes cold

Pipeline reviewed, deals updated, follow-ups drafted. Nothing slips just because you got busy.

Walk in already briefed

Who they are, what they want, and what you promised last time, in your pocket before the meeting.

Decisions arrive pre-chewed

The research done, the options costed, the risks named and one recommendation on top. All you supply is the yes.

Slack pings, Stripe payouts, Xero bills, the school newsletter, the bank feed, the flight that just moved. She listens to all of it so only what matters reaches your phone.

SlackGmailUp BankGoogle CalendarWoolworthsXeroAmazonStripeQantasQuickBooksUberClickUpHome AssistantOutlookGoogle DriveSlackGmailUp BankGoogle CalendarWoolworthsXeroAmazonStripeQantasQuickBooksUberClickUpHome AssistantOutlookGoogle Drive
AsanaAirbnbTrelloNABLinearTodoistNotionHubSpotShopifyCalendlyZoomDropboxGoogle WorkspaceTelegramWhatsAppAsanaAirbnbTrelloNABLinearTodoistNotionHubSpotShopifyCalendlyZoomDropboxGoogle WorkspaceTelegramWhatsApp
The team behind the name

One Donna, a Whole Specialist Team

You speak only to Donna. There is no second bot and nothing else to log into. She brings the right specialists together behind the scenes, then returns one clear answer.

Specialist roster

A representative bench. Personas change, deepen and expand as your life does.

Sophia

Relationships and communication

Helps prepare hard conversations, notices recurring patterns and protects the relationship while the practical problem gets solved.

Donna brings them in for

Marriage, repair and emotional clarity

These are backstage capabilities, not separate bots. Donna remains the single front door, the final editor and the person accountable for what reaches you.

Always on hand

24/7 across the channels already on your phone. The 2am thought has somewhere else to live.

Memory that compounds

Corrections, observed patterns, maintained skills and workflows become durable context instead of disappearing with the chat.

Built to improve

When a process breaks or life changes, the system is repaired, documented and better prepared for the next version of the problem.

Control stays with you

Nothing is sent, booked, spent or submitted without your approval. Donna prepares boldly, then stops at your yes.

The output is not more AI. It is mental clarity and a home that runs

The specialists provide depth. Donna turns it into one useful decision, catches the follow-through and keeps the whole system out of your head.

The difference

Here’s What Changes When Donna Starts

Same life, same you. The only thing that moves is who is carrying it.

Without Donna

With Donna

11:47pm, rehearsing the list in the dark

Asleep. The list lives in her head now

The invoice chase, written four times in your head

Drafted overnight, sent with one yes

The school form, 80% sure you submitted it

Submitted Wednesday, receipt filed

Subscriptions quietly billing since March

Audited monthly, cancellations drafted

Your partner’s list, invisible until it boils over

One shared inbox for the household

Your memory as the family filing cabinet

Retired. She never forgets

She compounds

Correct Her Once and It Stays Corrected

Every correction becomes memory. The Donna you own in month six knows your world better than the one you installed, and she cost exactly the same.

Filed the Bunnings receipt to Ential, under office supplies.

That one’s for the deck at home. Personal, not business.

Moved. And noted: hardware on a weekend is the house, not the company.

Saved to memory. Applies to every receipt after this one

  • Corrections are permanent

    Tell her once that weekend hardware runs are the house, not the company, and every receipt after it files itself right.

  • An EA takes it with them

    Six months to learn your world, then it walks out the door with the resignation letter. Donna’s memory stays put.

  • You paid once

    She is sharper in month six than on day one. Same install, same price, and the return keeps compounding.

Most things you buy for $3,990 depreciate. This one gets sharper every week you own her.

Who is behind her

I Run My Company and My House on Her

Ryan Drake, founder of Ential
The founder, formerly buried

I’m Ryan, founder of Ential. I did not build Donna as a product. I built her because I was the person in the first half of this page. Two operations, one overloaded brain, a wife carrying a list I could not even see.

The Donna I will install for you is the same system that runs my life now. She reads my inbox, briefs my mornings, chases my invoices, watches our household money, and catches the school-and-house admin before it lands on either of us. This page you are reading was planned, written and shipped inside that system. She would like that noted.

I will be honest about where this is up to: Donna is new as a product, and there is no wall of customer logos here yet, because I refuse to invent one. What you have instead is a founder who trusts her with his own family’s admin, a boundary that makes her mistakes reversible, and a guarantee below that puts the risk on me. The launch price runs until September 15. It is the deal you get for arriving before the proof does.

One more thing, because you would be right to ask. I do the install with you, on a call, using access you grant and can see. Once she is live, that access is revoked and your credentials are rotated. She runs on your accounts, not mine, and I could not read your mail afterwards if I wanted to.

Ryan Drake

The maths

You Were About to Hire an EA

Lovely people, EAs. Also $85,000 a year, one channel, and they quite reasonably go home at five.

Cost

EA: $85,000+ a year, every single year

$3,990 once, then $99/mo running costs after month 4, plus the ChatGPT Pro plan we recommend ($155/mo)

Hours

EA: 38 a week, minus leave

24/7, including the 2am thought

Channels

EA: Email and a desk

Telegram, iMessage, Slack, WhatsApp, email, phone

Scope

EA: Your work calendar

Your whole life: business, money, home, family

Context

EA: Learns your world in 6 months

Connected to it on day one

Resigns

EA: Eventually

Never. She likes it here

$0

saved in year one, all-in, before you count year two

0 channels

everywhere you already are, not one inbox

24/7

no leave, no notice period, no Mondays off

An EA is a salary. A VA is a retainer. Every AI assistant on the market rents you access and keeps the memory when you leave. Donna is the one you own: her setup, her memory and her routines are yours, documented and handed over at go-live. The $99 a month from month 5 keeps her computer and her cloud running; it does not buy her back from us. She is not just the cheapest line on this table. She is the best hire on it.

Payment first, on purpose. Your mapping call books the moment you’re done. 30-day guarantee.

The maths, on your numbers

What Is a Week Actually Worth Back

Slide to how your life really runs. This prices your time, it does not promise revenue.

Business admin you do each week10 hrs
2 hrs30 hrs
Household admin each week5 hrs
1 hr20 hrs
What your hour is worth$120
$30$400

Assumes Donna takes the hours you just counted. Her year-1 cost, all-in: $6,642 ($3,990 install including her first 4 months in the cloud, then $99 a month, plus ChatGPT Pro at $155 a month).

Your First Year With Her

780 Hours Back

That is 21 working weeks of your life, returned

$93,600

Your time, at your rate

$86,958

Net of her all-in year-1 cost

She pays for herself in 4 weeks. Every week after that is yours.

An executive assistant doing a fraction of this is $85,000 a year.

Payment first, on purpose. Your mapping call books the moment you’re done. 30-day guarantee.

How it works

Running in 3 Days, Lifting the Load in a Week

01

You make the hire

One payment, $3,990 until September 15. Your mapping call books the moment you’re done. The deciding is the only admin you have to do.

02

We map your loops

One working session on how your life actually runs: what lands on you, what lands on your partner, what keeps falling through.

03

We connect her world

Channels, calendar, inbox, accounts, the apps you already use. No new app, no dashboard, no homework.

04

She goes live

The first morning brief lands the next day. We tune her weekly for 30 days until she disappears into your routine.

A short honesty section

Donna Is Not for Everyone

  • If you enjoy your admin, genuinely, keep it. She would only be taking a hobby.
  • If you want a fully autonomous AI that sends and spends without checking, she will frustrate you on purpose. The boundary is not a setting, it is the product.
  • If you cannot spare one call’s worth of honesty about how your life actually runs, wait until you can. The mapping session is the whole install.
  • If $3,990 would strain the household rather than relieve it, wait. She will still exist when the timing is right, though the launch price may not.

If you read the first half of this page and felt watched, she was built for you.

The launch offer

Hire Donna Once and She Never Hands In Her Notice

Installed personally by Ryan, tuned until she is invisible, owned by you outright.

The Donna Install

$3,990$5,490

Launch price until September 15. From September 16, the install returns to $5,490.

AUD. The price covers the full install and her first 4 months in the cloud. From month 5 her running costs are $99 a month, her own computer, internet and cloud, plus the ChatGPT plan she thinks with: we recommend ChatGPT Pro at $155 a month, and we confirm your expected cost on the mapping call, before she goes live. An EA costs $85,000 a year. Donna’s entire first year, all-in, is about $6,642, roughly 4 weeks of one.

  • The mapping session. One working call where we chart both halves of your life: every loop, every channel, everything that keeps falling through.
  • The full install. Channels, calendar, inbox, money feeds and the apps you already use, connected and tested by us, not by you.
  • Your daily rhythm, configured. Morning brief, day plan, end-of-day wrap, weekly reset and the monthly money sweep, all tuned to how your week actually runs.
  • The approval boundary, set to your comfort. From “check everything with me” to “just flag the big stuff”, decided by you on the call.
  • The partner channel. Donna works for the household, not just for you. Your partner gets her number too. The mental load finally gets a shared inbox.
  • Her first 4 months in the cloud. Her own computer, her own internet access and the cloud she works from 24/7, included until month 5. After that her running costs are $99 a month.
  • 30 days of weekly tuning. A month of corrections with Ryan until she stops feeling like software and starts feeling like staff.

What you own on day 31

Donna is not a service you rent from us. She is a configured agent system running on your own accounts and your own AI plan: the setup, the memory, the routines and the integrations, documented and handed to you at go-live. On day 31 she keeps working exactly as she did on day 30. The only meters are her $99-a-month running costs from month 5 and the ChatGPT plan she thinks with; there is no charge on her work itself. If a channel, model or provider update ever breaks something in your first year, message us and we repair it at no charge. And because she lives on your accounts, not ours, she keeps running even in a world where Ential does not.

The 30-Day Wrong-Hire Guarantee

Take the full month. If your first morning brief has not landed within 14 days of your mapping call, that is on us and you get every dollar back. And if at any point in your first 30 days you decide she is not your hire, say so in one message. We uninstall her completely, delete her memory, and refund you in full. Your accounts stay yours, your data stays home, and the only thing she takes with her is her dignity. The worst case is your money back and a very tidy inbox for a month.

Why the launch price exists: Ryan installs and tunes every Donna personally, which caps installs at four per month, booked in order of payment. The launch price runs until September 15, then the install returns to $5,490 and stays there. No countdown clock, just a date. If you are going to make the best hire of your life, the next few weeks are the cheapest it will ever be.

Payment first, on purpose. Your mapping call books on the next screen, and Donna is up and running within 3 days. 30-Day Wrong-Hire Guarantee.

The risk sits with us

30 Days with Her or Every Dollar Back

If your first morning brief has not landed within 14 days of the mapping call, full refund. If at any point in your first 30 days you decide she is not your hire, say so in one message: uninstalled, memory deleted, refunded in full. The worst case is your money back and a very tidy inbox for a month.

Questions

Questions, Answered

Read, draft, organise, research, prepare. Anything irreversible (sending, booking, buying, cancelling, paying) waits for your explicit yes. She takes the work to the edge of done and stops there. Every time.
You do. Donna runs on your accounts, under your control, through your own ChatGPT or Claude subscription, which means your data is handled under that provider’s standard terms, the same ones covering the chats you already have with it. She stores pointers, not secrets: she knows where your documents live, never your passwords or card numbers. Ential keeps no copy and no access. During the install, Ryan connects your channels with you on the call, using access you grant and can watch, and that access is revoked and rotated at go-live. There is no Donna cloud reading your mail.
She is warm, sharp and occasionally smug about having already done the thing. The personality is tuned to you during install, from dry-and-efficient through to full charm offensive. The competence is not adjustable. It stays high.
Then a draft was wrong, not a sent email or a spent dollar. The approval boundary means her mistakes are always reversible. Correct her once and she remembers. The first 30 days of weekly tuning exist for exactly this.
You are precisely who she was built for. Donna does not need you to be organised. That is the entire point. Forward, forget, and she follows up. The system works even on the weeks you cannot.
No. Donna is a system we install and configure around your life. She lives in the messaging apps already on your phone and works across your calendar, inbox, bank feeds and CRM.
You install first, then book your mapping call on the spot. One session to map your loops, then we connect your channels and accounts. Donna is up and running across your business and your personal life within 3 days, and she is lifting the mental load by the end of her first week.
The launch price is $3,990 AUD until September 15, then the standard $5,490. That covers the full install and her first 4 months in the cloud. From month 5 her running costs are $99 a month, which keeps her computer, her internet and her cloud alive. On top of that is the ChatGPT plan she thinks with: we recommend ChatGPT Pro at $155 a month, and we confirm your expected cost on the mapping call. For scale: an executive assistant runs $85,000 a year and works one channel. Donna’s entire first year, all-in, is about $6,642, and she works six. Payment comes first and the mapping call books straight after, because the one thing Donna cannot do yet is decide for you.
A configured agent system, built on your own accounts and your own ChatGPT or Claude plan, plus the labour and judgement of the person who runs one on his own life. Concretely: the mapping session, every channel and integration connected and tested, your daily rhythm and approval boundary configured, her memory seeded with your world, and 30 days of weekly tuning. The whole setup is documented and handed to you at go-live. It is yours, portable, and it does not phone home to us.
You can build a lot of it, and if tinkering with automations is how you want to spend your weekends, sincerely, enjoy it. Here is what you will be building: something that reaches you on six channels instead of waiting in one app, remembers permanently instead of per-conversation, watches your world instead of waiting to be asked, and refuses to send or spend without you. That is months of configuration and upkeep. The remembering and the maintaining stay your job, and the remembering was always the job. Donna is what you get when someone does all of that for you in a week, then keeps tuning it.
It is real money and it deserves a real answer. What you are paying for is not software, it is the install: a working session to map your life, every channel and account connected by us, your daily rhythm configured, the boundary tuned, and a month of weekly refinement. The same capability as an $85,000-a-year hire, minus the salary, the leave and the resignation letter. If she does not earn that back in chased invoices, cancelled double-charges, missed-late-fee misery and reclaimed evenings inside a year, the 30-day guarantee exists so you never have to find out the hard way.
A fair question, so here are the numbers with nothing hidden. You pay $3,990 once, and her first 4 months in the cloud are included. From month 5 her running costs are $99 a month: her own computer, her own internet access and the cloud she works from, 24/7. On top of that is the ChatGPT plan she thinks with, and we recommend ChatGPT Pro at $155 a month for households that use her hard. There is no other retainer and no meter on her work. All-in, her first year is about $6,642, which is about 4 weeks of an executive assistant’s salary.
She keeps working. The 30 days are for tuning, not life support: by the end of them she is running on your accounts with her setup documented and in your hands. When a provider changes something, a channel updates or a model is retired, and eventually one will be, message us in your first year and we repair it at no charge. After that, the documentation means any competent person can maintain her, and we are still here if you would rather it be us. And because she lives entirely on your accounts, nothing about her depends on Ential continuing to exist.
Photograph from the foot of the bed: dim lamplight, feet resting under the covers, completely at ease, timestamped 11:47 PM
11:47pm. Nothing to rehearse

It’s Handled

Some Tuesday soon, it will be 11:47pm and you will notice something strange. The list is not running. The invoice was chased on day ten. The form went in on Wednesday, and you know it did, because you said yes to it over coffee. The subscription died quietly. Your partner’s list and yours finally live in the same place, and that place is no longer either of your heads.

You will lie there with nothing to rehearse. It takes some getting used to.

“You bring the chaos. I’ll bring the calm.”

Donna

Payment first, on purpose. Your mapping call books the moment you’re done. 30 days with her or your money back.