Practical AI For Australian Businesses

Llew Jury

Welcome to the AI Intelligence Podcast, brought to you by Advancer - The AI Agency! Hi Ollie, hows things? Do you remember when running a tech company in Australia meant pitching to investors for hours? I swear, you had to sell them on why cloud even mattered, let alone AI. These days, it feels like every headline's another billion-dollar cheque. Nvidia drops five billion into Intel, OpenAI out here chasing a hundred billion for cloud infrastructure. Microsoft's building a seven-billion-dollar data centre—for what, giant server rooms in Wisconsin. Just mind-blowing scale.

Ollie Carter

Hi Llew and it's great to be here. Yes, It’s crazy and honestly this stuff isn’t just Silicon Valley ego tripping—it means Aussie businesses, whether you’re in Cairns or the Brisbane CBD, can plug into world-class AI. You used to need a tech army and huge chequebook to get anything running. Now you just tap into the ‘AI grid’—like electricity! Plug in, pay what you use, and you’re away.

Llew Jury

That “AI grid”—spot on. Back when I started out, if you wanted basic automation, you built everything yourself or you just missed out. Now, these investments mean SMEs here have the same tools the big global corporates do. It's honestly transformative. Like, you don’t even have to know what a GPU is anymore, let alone buy one.

Ollie Carter

Exactly, and the effect is real. We’re talking cost dropping like a stone, and smaller businesses getting an actual shot at stuff we’d never even dreamt was realistic, even a few years back. The World Trade Organization reckons AI could boost global trade by nearly forty percent in fifteen years. That’s not just theory. That’s supply chains, exports, making local businesses more competitive overnight.

Llew Jury

And it’s not slowing down. I heard AMD’s Lisa Su say we’re in this wild ten-year growth phase—that we can’t even picture what AI’s up to, five years from now. And meanwhile, European players like Mistral, or Chinese giants, are rocketing forwards too. Means more competition, more innovation, and it keeps the costs honest for everyone. Suddenly my mate in Cairns can analyse customers or automate bookings like a Fortune 500. That’s the shift we always hoped for, hey?

Ollie Carter

Yeah, “the playing field is truly levelling out”. It’s wild, Llew. And maybe we’ll finally stop hearing that old excuse, “We’d love to do AI, but it’s all too expensive!” Now? You can’t afford not to try.

Llew Jury

Totally agree. And for the founders coming through now, honestly, you lot have a head start that we could only dream of. Just hook into the infrastructure and get building. Right, Ols, but there’s still hype out there we need to cut through…

Ollie Carter

Oh mate, there’s hype everywhere. If I had a dollar for every startup pitch where someone says, “We’ll just AI all the things,” I’d, well, with Sprint we don't invest just because they have an .ai domain name! Truth is though, most Aussie business owners get sold these big AI dreams, and they fizzle. Stats are confronting: ninety-five percent of AI pilot projects, they actually fail. That’s huge.

Llew Jury

Yeah, and that’s exactly what we keep hearing. “Just sprinkle a bit of AI magic on it, she’ll be right.” The smart operators, they start with something small—find a repeating pain point, automate it, and build from there. That’s the only way anyone’s getting real impact. Just like the growth we're seeing at Advancer with our great team building leading AI and Automations for clever Queensland businesses, it's a real repeatable partnership that is working.

Ollie Carter

Like, let’s get concrete for a sec—there’s this Melbourne cafe, right? Lots of no-shows, staff tied up on the phone, bookings lost. So, they plug in an AI-powered reservation system. Not even fancy—just picks up phone bookings and handles it online. Three months in: bookings up eighteen percent, sixty-five percent going online, and a twelve percent drop in no-shows. It freed up their staff five hours a week. That’s actual progress.

Llew Jury

And it’s not just the cafes. Through Advancer, we've put in Eleven Labs Voice AI into Bartons - an innovative Brisbane automotive dealership, where we have Sally a digital assistant now taking car service bookings 24/7. Sally is trained on real world questions and helps the Bartons call centre team freeing up their time, just like the Sales AI that we have in there called Marco that books in test drives using a US platform called Podium. And the great thing is that Barton's didn’t need to overhaul everything— it was plug and play, solving one task at a time. And the results have been fantastic.

Ollie Carter

But I’ve seen the flipside too—mate, there was this startup I looked at, wanted to “go AI” on every single process all at once. Ended up with a mess, they didn’t know what was working and what wasn’t. Compare that to the guys who pick one burning problem—get a return, then layer in more stuff after. The second group survives. First one, not so much.

Llew Jury

It’s like—don’t try and boil the ocean, right? Just start with the puddle by your feet. I get asked all the time, “But Llew, shouldn’t we dream big?” Sure! But start tiny. Like, genuinely, pilot something practical with a proof of concept. If this POC works, double down. If not, you haven’t wasted your year—or all your cash—on a wild goose chase.

Ollie Carter

It’s a bit like what we discussed in earlier episodes—AI’s biggest leaps usually start as the tiniest experiments. Whether you’re running an automotive delearship or building SaaS for half the country, same logic applies: fix one thing first. Helps you see if the hype’s actually help, or just—well—hype.

Llew Jury

Totally. Maybe we should get “solve one thing” printed on tshirts for next season. Alright, Ollie, but speaking of things going sideways—there are some serious lessons in the fails too.

Ollie Carter

Oh, definitely. Let’s talk fails, because there are some doozies. Like Air Canada’s chatbot the other week—guy’s grandma passes away, asks their bot about a bereavement discount, and it straight up makes up a fake policy. Said he’d get a retroactive discount, but—no such thing exists. When he tried to actually claim it, Air Canada tried to blame the bot! Claimed it was a “separate legal entity.” Didn’t work. Ended up in court, and Air Canada had to pay. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

Llew Jury

It’s one of those cases where if you don’t supervise your AI, it’ll make things up just to be helpful—or just straight up invent policies. And then you’re left holding the bag. That’s why, even in my own companies, we make sure the guardrails are fully tested as if you don't watch closely, you'll face angry customers and get weird mistakes. I always say—AI works best as a co-pilot, never an unsupervised pilot.

Ollie Carter

Spot on. So, for everyone listening, here’s your AI action plan: first, don’t start with the tech. Start with the business pain point and the people involved. Is something repetitive? Is it eating your team’s time or costing you cash? Write it down—old school style, post-it on your monitor. That’s your north star.

Llew Jury

Then, do your homework. Jump online—Google “AI tools for your problem”, you’ll find affordable stuff tailored for bookings, customer service, you name it. Next, don’t be afraid to get help—tap experts or companies like Advancer who live and breathe this, so you get it right for your actual needs. And remember pilot small before going full scale.

Ollie Carter

Yeah, don’t try to do it all at once or you’ll end up a headline. Tackle one little win, get it running, then expand. Remember, with AI, the ninety-five percent failure rate is real—but the successful five percent started exactly like this. Small, specific, measured, watched closely. That’s how you end up with the ROI story, not a court case.

Llew Jury

Love it. And honestly, the wins are there. Start with the stuff that annoys you, solve it with AI, and keep human eyes on it. And remember, if today's episode got you thinking about AI for your business, you can book a free AI consultation with the great team at Advancer - the AI Agency. Check them out at advancer.com.au!

Ollie Carter

Always, mate. Listeners—thanks for tuning into The AI Intelligence Podcast. If you made it this far, you’re already smarter than most bots. Llew, see you next week?

Llew Jury

You bet, Ollie. Cheers, everyone, look after yourselves—and don’t let your chatbot go rogue. Catch ya next time!