What clients say.

I spent half a day with Blake last Friday exploring how I could use ChatGPT to streamline and improve my business processes, and what a fantastic session it was!

I loved learning more about what is possible and was absolutely buzzing with ideas after Blake left!

Blake has a great way of explaining things in a way that makes sense, without making it feel overwhelming. He took the time to understand my business and what I wanted to achieve, and at the end of our session made sure we had covered everything I had hoped to.

I would definitely recommend Blake to anyone who is curious about AI and open to finding smarter, more efficient ways of working. It's amazing what is possible when you have someone who can show you how to make the most of these tools.

For me, it's all about freeing up time to focus on what I do best working in my business rather than on it!

Thanks Blake, I'm excited to start putting everything into practice!

We've been working with Blake to get AI set up across the team, and it's been a great experience. His workshops were practical and suited to how our team actually works. Highly recommend.

We had Blake speak at our 'BA Big Day In' conference on the 16th of October 2026. Blake is an amazing speaker and had a group of 120+ Business Analysts in the palm of his hand! The way he was able to show a new world where AI tools were truly integrated into your day-to-day (with well-tailored and reusable skills driving the mahi) was inspiring. A real asset to put in front of any audience!!

Blake has been a fantastic supporter of juniors breaking into tech. He ran two sessions for Summer of Tech this year, and the response was huge: 100+ students attended.

Blake gave our tauira practical, honest advice on building an online presence that gets them noticed and on the AI skills NZ employers are hiring for right now. Just as importantly, he gave them confidence. He showed students that you don't need years of experience or a big following to start standing out, a powerful message for anyone early in their career.

Thanks, Blake, for investing your time in the next generation of NZ talent. <3

We recently invited Blake to speak at a UC Marketing Society event about how AI is actually being used in marketing, and he was fantastic.

Blake made AI feel practical and accessible, sharing real examples from his own business, including content repurposing, organising media, competitor research and SEO. I especially appreciated his honesty about the mistakes he had made, including handing too much of the creative process over to AI and seeing how quickly that can weaken a brand.

His presentation was engaging, relatable and refreshingly free of empty AI buzzwords. The key message, that AI should amplify your skills rather than replace your thinking, really stuck with me.

Blake was also incredibly generous with his time and advice. I would highly recommend him to any business, organisation or student group wanting a realistic and genuinely useful perspective on AI and marketing.

I attended a seminar about AI in marketing where Blake was one of the presenters. I learned plenty from the discussion and his insights were seriously valuable in guiding my approach to using AI in marketing strategy in my own work. Definitely worth learning from these guys as they are experts with AI and I think it's super important to know how to use it to support your work, not take it over. I highly recommend Harkness AI.

Great to work with. Creative, professional and very responsive. Delivered a really well-designed, user-friendly Franklin Seniors Directory. It exceeded expectations and will be an awesome resource for our community. Highly recommended.

Organised, eloquent speaker with great insight to the future of AI on work. Working with Blake for our "Graduating into AI" event on behalf of AUT CSEA, was simple and high impact.

Knows what he's talking about! Super engaging speaker, highly recommend.

Building MS Project tender programmes straight from the tender docs has not only saved me hours of manual work but has also improved the quality of the final product without over-spending time. Overall, well worth the time and I've already recommended the course to some of my friends that are exploring AI options within their workspaces.

Alex and I spent a day with Blake from Harkness AI setting up Claude across our complicated business systems, and it was the best investment we've made!

Blake was amazing. He was patient, really knowledgeable and genuinely interested in how our business runs. Rather than just showing us features, he built everything around our real platforms. By the end of the day we had our website SEO, wholesale invoice checks and supplier pricing all running through Claude, plus payroll, emails, business branding, lightspeed and so much more!! All on working on our actual systems.

He made something that felt quite technical really easy to understand. We came away excited to use Claude every day to save time, human error and cut out the double/triple handling between our different platforms.

We highly recommend Harkness AI to any business wanting to simplify its systems, work smarter and get real, practical value from AI. Thank you Blake!

Blake presented at our IFAA conference and received excellent feedback from our advisers. He made AI easy to understand, with practical examples and useful ideas they could apply in their businesses. His session was a conference highlight and left members keen to learn more. We’d happily recommend Blake to other organisations looking for an engaging speaker on AI.

Just had Blake present at our conference and he was fantastic. Super informative but at a level we could all understand and very engaging. Highly recommend as a speaker for an event.

Blake gave us a great introduction about what is AI. The slides and explanations were clear and easy to understand. The demo using Claude was helpful as well. Highly recommend.

We brought Blake in to run an AI workshop for our team, and it was excellent. He struck a great balance between explaining concepts clearly and keeping things practical, encouraged questions and made the whole session feel very engaging. Highly recommend if you're looking to upskill your team on AI in a way that actually sticks.

Blake ran a couple of sessions for my team. He was fantastic; he made it really simple for the whole team to understand, regardless of their previous AI experience.

Blake built me a custom AI 'brain' that now handles a chunk of my day-to-day admin and research gathering. He took the time to understand how I actually work before building anything, and has been responsive every time I've hit a snag. Great combination of technical skill and genuine patience with a non-technical client. Would recommend him to anyone wanting to put AI to real use in their business. Thanks Blake!

Blake gets it - prompt, professional, knows his stuff. He took us through the easy set ups and built custom connectors and processors for our more niche requirements. Quick, fun and already changing the way we work.

We engaged Harkness AI to build an internal AI-driven quality assurance platform, and Alex has been excellent to work with throughout. He picked up a fairly niche operational problem quickly, turned it into a workable technical design, and delivered in steady increments rather than disappearing for weeks at a time. Communication was clear and honest, including when something turned out harder than first scoped. The platform is now in testing with our team and doing what we asked of it. Easy to recommend if you want practical AI implementation rather than theory.

Blake is amazing, his knowledge of AI is really impressive. He helped us become more confident with AI and showed us how to use it in our business. The training sessions were great, and he's very approachable and always happy to help. He also presented at our networking event and received fantastic feedback from everyone.

Recently completed a half day course with Blake building my Claude Brain. The course was insightful & practical. Running 2 companies I know this is going to help me claw back some time on a lot of the repetitive tasks. Thank you Blake, excellent value and advice.

Nick Zaloumis

Director, Trap and Trigger Ltd

Blake has become our go-to for everything AI in our business. He started by helping us set up Claude across the business and training our team to actually use it well, then built out a range of connections between our AI systems and the apps we run day to day, both native integrations and custom ones like our PayHero setup that we had struggled to get working ourselves.

Beyond the technical builds, Blake has been a genuine sounding board. He talks through our ideas with us, gives honest advice on what is worth doing, and steers us away from things that will not pay off. He has built us AI tools for reporting and project tracking that have made a real difference to how we operate.

What stands out is how easy he is to deal with. He keeps us in the loop, hits his timelines, and hands over tools that work along with clear instructions so we can run with them. He knows his stuff and gets things done.

We would happily recommend Blake and Harkness AI to any business looking to get real value out of AI.

Blake brought a solid technology & AI perspective to our engagement at BMC. He clearly knows his space and was easy to work with, the conversations he sparked were useful in helping us get clearer on what we actually needed from a systems / AI standpoint. Thanks again.

Blake took the time to understand our vision and explained the technical side in a way that was easy to follow, making the whole process simple and stress-free. He took a complex idea and turned it into something practical, clear and user-friendly. Great work, great communication, and a great experience from start to finish.

Daniel Habedank

DragonPuppy LTD

Blake is an absolute gem to work with! When I was drowning in the deep end trying to implement our Podcast Portal, Blake threw me a lifeline. He became an A+ collaborator who made the whole experience actually enjoyable.

Will (Viriamu) Fleming

Campfire Studios

Blake is an outstanding collaborator.

He is exceptionally well-suited to work with businesses of any size - whether small startups or large organisations. Blake has a unique ability to identify core challenges and ideas within a company and transform them into effective solutions. His expertise in AI, combined with his excellent people skills, enables him to deliver results that are both highly functional and cost-effective.

I highly recommend working with Blake.

Ian Hight

Client Director at Jade Software Corporation

Blake exemplifies what makes a great tech-sector professional: the ability to combine strong technical expertise with excellent soft skills. He pairs high-level technical competence and sharp critical thinking with outstanding collaboration and communication abilities.

You are so good at what you do and so generous with your time and findings!

You are an truly inspirational young guy, and you've got a lot ahead of you! Can't wait to see you transform NZ!!!

Akhil Navuluri

Tech o Space Podcast

Firstly it was lovely collaborating with Blake through my podcast initiative 'The Tech'o'Space Podcast', he surely has set the standard high when it comes to innovation in the IT field.