Business Addicts

Name: Business Addicts
Address: Level 1, Suite 2&3, 283 Old Geelong Road, Hoppers Crossing, VIC, 3029, AU

Business Addicts is a community for business owners dedicated to building a business that fuels a life they love!

With a rich legacy of a popular podcast and a collaborative coworking space, we inspire and empower entrepreneurs to thrive. Business Addicts Coworking is located at Suite 2&3, Level 1, 283 Old Geelong Road, Hoppers Crossing. Business Addicts The Podcast is hosted by Loren Bartley (Impactiv8) & Fiona Redding (The Happiness Hunter).

15/10/2026

Artificial intelligence is overrated... On its own, anyway.

It’s impressive. But it’s the same impressive for everyone. Ask it for something, and you get the average of what’s on the internet, in a voice that sounds like everyone else in your industry.

Amplified Intelligence is where it’s at.

It’s what happens when you combine machine intelligence with your human skill. I'm talking about your judgement, your experience, your way of explaining things. It isn’t a choice between AI and you. It’s a synthesis of both, with you leading and AI as the partner, not the pilot.

Synthesis, not substitution.

And that’s the bit your competitors can’t copy, because the intelligence being amplified is yours.

But AI can only amplify your intelligence once it knows what your intelligence is. I’ve written up the four parts that make that happen.

Give it a read and let me know what you think. Link in comments.

14/10/2026

I’ve been running a lot more lately. And swimming. And walking the dog.

Exercise used to be a massive part of my world. Then I started my own business, and it slowly slid off the priority list. But I'm well and truly glad to say that, it’s back. And AI is a big part of the reason why.

Not because it does my work for me, but because I took the time to set it up properly. It knows my business, my voice and my customers, so I’m not starting from scratch in any of the work I do anymore.

So when a new NSW Small Business Commission report found 47% of small businesses now use AI, my first thought was... how many of them are actually working fewer hours because of it?

Using AI isn’t the win. Getting your time back is.

Here’s what “using AI” looks like for a lot of business owners right now. You open a chat. You explain who you are, what you sell and who you sell to. Again. You get something back that could have been written for any business on the planet. Then you rewrite half of it so it actually sounds like you.

That’s not saving time, and it’s definitely not something that will improve the bottom line of your business.

The same report found 63% of small businesses have fewer than four people, and nearly half of owners are in business for independence. When it’s just you, or close to it, every hour counts. If AI isn’t giving you hours back, it’s not doing its job properly for you.

The fix isn’t a fancier tool. It’s you staying in charge of how AI works for you.

⭐️ Write down your business, your voice and your customers once, and give that to your AI every time.
⭐️ Pick one repetitive marketing job and set it up properly, instead of dabbling in ten.
⭐️ Keep the final call. Anything with your name on it gets your eyes before it goes out.

Honest question... Since you started using AI, are you working fewer hours, and is it giving you the independence you got into business for? I know it is for me. My workout gear is getting a lot more use these days, and I am very happy about that.

13/10/2026

How many new leads came into your business last week?

And more importantly, could you find the real number right now?

I asked exactly that in my Lead Activator Activation Lab this morning. The answers ranged from five minutes to half an hour. One said it was scattered about. Another said it lives in her head.

Now multiply that by every number you need to find to make important decisions about your business. I can tell you now, without even doing the maths, that's too long.

And because of this, most of us end up deciding on gut feeling. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a definite place for a gut call. But when you’re deciding where to put your time and your money, the data usually wins.

But it doesn't have to be this way... If you’ve got a decent CRM, the answer is already sitting in there. There’s just no system set up to make it easy to get to.

So that’s what we all built this morning, together in the Lab. Two things, each doing a different job.

A dashboard as the instrument panel. Always on, free to glance at, and anyone on your team can read it. Thirty seconds on a Monday and you know where you stand.

Claude as the analyst sitting next to it. You just ask, and it works it out. The questions that don’t fit neatly inside a widget, the ones that need a bit of maths, and the all important "why".

Your dashboard is the scoreboard. Claude’s the coach who tells you what to change at half-time.

One isn’t better than the other. You want both on the team.

09/10/2026

Midday. Outdoor pool. Sun out. This is the part of AI I don’t post about enough.

I talk a lot about what AI helps me do in my business. I talk far less about what it gives back to my life. I’ve always loved swimming, but my business and family commitments kept me out of the pool for many years. So one of the biggest things AI has given me is being able to swim more.

I swim several times a week now. And I love that I can do it whenever it suits me because my AI workforce keeps me on top of my workload rather than drowning in it. Pun intended.

What do you love that AI has given you more time for? (And no, “more work” doesn’t count.)

08/10/2026

“I wanted to opt in for your Content Jumpstart, but the page says it was on the 27th of August.”

Someone told me that after my presentation at SWIMCON26 a couple of weeks ago. It was well past the 27th of August. I thought, “What an idiot, I forgot to change that.”

Before my current setup, a fix like that would’ve taken me at least an hour. Find what needed changing, decide on the new copy, then go in and make the changes.

This time I sat down at my trade stand desk, opened Claude and said, “The Content Jumpstart page is out of date. I need it to be evergreen.” It came back with everything that needed changing. I checked it, said “Great, approved,” and asked it to go and update the page on my website.

And it did. Fixed within ten minutes of finding the problem, and my involvement was about two minutes.

That only happened because I’d already handed my AI the keys. Connectors are the keys in your AI office. Without them, your AI can only hand the work back to you: “Here’s the copy, now go and paste it in.” With them, it does the next step itself.

Handing over keys can feel scary, so do what you’d do with any new team member. Put a lockbox in place. Let it read freely, make it ask before it changes anything, and give it more access as it earns your trust.

Which job would you hand your AI the keys to first?

06/10/2026

AI isn't just a tool. It's a whole new way of working, and it gets much easier to understand once you see it as an office.

I find myself explaining the pieces of AI to people all the time, in workshops and on calls. Skills, projects, context windows, memory. Explained one at a time, AI stays a weird, invisible concept you can't quite wrap your head around. So I mapped the whole thing out in one place.

Your AI tool is a rented building. You don't own it, and the landlord can renovate whenever they like. Skills are your specialist staff. Projects are your desks, and the context window is the desk surface: pile too much on and things start sliding off the edge. Your AI Brain is the filing cabinet, the one piece of furniture you can roll into the next building.

And the default in the AI office is amnesia. Everything you set up exists to get around it.

If you wouldn't expect a new starter to do good work on day one with no brief, no files and no access, don't expect it from AI either. Skip the setup and every day is day one.

I've written up the whole office, room by room, so you can see where each piece fits. You'll find the link in the first comment.

Which room in your AI office is still empty?

02/10/2026

Last Friday I had an idea... By Wednesday, I had a fully functioning brand spanking new website.

Not a landing page. A full site for AI Mega Success. More than 40 pages, SEO set up, share images, a sitemap, and every old link redirected so nothing broke.

The time I actually put in? About a day and a half. And not in one block. I did it in spurts, in between client work and everything else on my list.

Here's who did what.

Me: The ideas and the decisions. What the site needed to say, who it was for, what stayed and what went. Every call was mine.

Claude: My build partner. It turned my ideas into clear, detailed briefs for the website builder, checked every change on the live site, and caught anything that didn't come through (usually because I'd forgotten to hit publish 🙈). It also handled the fiddly bits I'd normally put off, like SEO titles, share images, redirects and ticking off my tasks in Asana.

AI Studio in Lead Activator: The builder. I pasted in each brief and it built the pages.

That's vibe coding. You describe what you want in plain English, and AI writes the code. I didn't write a single line.

A few years ago, a custom site like this would easily have cost $8,000 to $15,000 with an agency. It would have taken 6 to 12 weeks of briefs, drafts, feedback rounds and "just one more change" emails.

This took less than a week. And most of my energy went into thinking, not chasing.

Human-led. AI-powered.

Have a look at what I built (link in first comment). Yep, I am claiming this as something I did, as I was in the driver's seat the whole way, I just had cruise control on for most of the journey.

30/09/2026

I was feeling a bit blur yesterday.

I'm blaming it on a come-down from all my travels of late. For weeks my to-do list got conveniently put off because I had presentations to prepare, programs to launch and exciting events to be at. Now I've got a few weeks' reprieve from deadlines, and my days have been more mundane than magic.

I could feel a major funk coming on. The tasks needed doing, and now I finally had the time. I just didn't want to do them. Sound familiar?

So I did what I often do these days when something feels too hard to shift on my own. I built a skill.

Let me introduce you to Fritz Friction Fixer. He doesn't do plans or pep talks. Instead, he works out what's actually stopping me (too big, too dull, too far off, or not clear what "done" looks like). Then he gives me one first move that takes two minutes, with a clear finish line. And there's zero guilt. No "you should have started earlier." Just a "let me help you take that first step" kind of attitude.

He's built around me, so he knows my patterns, procrastination tactics, and personal peeves. He also knows the status of all my work in progress, he has visibility into all the tools I use, and he knows what Chandler, my AI Chief of Staff, has set as my priority tasks.

Yesterday, I took a photo of my to-do list (yes, I still handwrite one every day) and let him coach me through it.

Here's what got done:
- Follow-ups from conversations at recent events, starting with the ones most likely to turn into revenue
- Prep for a November event with a massive lead time on their requirements
- Claude troubleshooting past Loren's dodgy Xero reconciliations, then setting up rules so it doesn't happen again
- Proactive client work to free up time for future Loren

All stuff that I just couldn't bring myself to do on my own, but Fritz helped me find the way.

And, I did all of it while vibe coding the new AI Mega Success website. That was the fun bit I'd been using as a procrastination crutch. This time it ran alongside the list instead of replacing it.

I got through way more than I thought was possible, so I rewarded myself with a night watching the football with my Dad. Thanks, Fritz. 🤗

29/09/2026

It's a great feeling when ChatGPT recommends you. It's an even better one when you actually get the gig.

This client had sold her business and needed the Meta accounts, the socials and the Google side moved across to the new owner. She'd tried for days on her own, and it was, in her words, too hard. So she asked ChatGPT who could help, and it pointed her to me.

What I loved about what happened next was how simple it was. She rang, she booked, she paid. No qualifying questions, no "tell me about your process", no comparing three quotes. Her trusted friend had already told her I was the one to call, and that was enough. One session later, everything was across, the new owner was in, and she'd left this review the same afternoon.

Thanks, Chatty. I'll take that.

Here's what, I think, is going on. When a recommendation comes from a tool someone already trusts and talks to every day, the trust transfers. The sales conversation you'd normally have to earn has already happened, just not with you. Which is exactly why what the LLMs know about you and your business is becoming a marketing job in its own right.

So I'm curious. Have you had work come through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or any of the other LLMs yet? And if so, did you notice the same thing... a much shorter, easier sales cycle because "Chatty" had already vouched for you?

24/09/2026

I spent the weekend on the Sunshine Coast at SWIMCON26, talking to swim coaches, teachers, swim school leaders and aquatic professionals about how to actually use AI in their businesses.

Across both presentations I delivered, and every conversation in between, one message kept coming up...

To get AI doing real work for you, there are four things to put in place:
⭐️ Build an AI brain
⭐️ Create skills
⭐️ Connect your tools
⭐️ Brief each task well, with the appropriate context and clear guidance around what done looks like

Build an AI brain - Your AI can only amplify your intelligence once it knows what your intelligence is, so give it the core knowledge it needs every time (who you are, what you're known for, how you sound, what you offer and who you serve) plus the deeper expertise it reaches for when a job calls for it. You already have most of this, it's just not anywhere your AI can get to it.

Create skills - A skill is one specialist doing one job to your standard, every time, and I've got around 150 of them now, including one that drafts my email replies three times a day and leaves them sitting in my drafts folder. You build one by doing the task once alongside your AI tool of choice, then asking it to turn that into a skill.

Connect your tools - Connected tools are what stop you being the person who cuts and pastes, because your AI does the next step instead of handing the work back to you. Give it read-only access freely, and keep writing and deleting behind your approval until you feel confident with the results.

Brief each task well - We've moved on from prompts, and a brief carries the right project, the context, the instructions, the boundaries and a clear picture of what done looks like. Not "write me an email", but "write this email, to this person, covering these points, and put it in my drafts so I can review and send it."

Get those four in place and you'll notice the difference. The same request that used to come back with "Dear valued customer, thank you for your enquiry" now names the person, knows their history with you, tells them exactly what happens next, and is sitting in your drafts folder before you even asked for it.

Address

Level 1, Suite 2&3, 283 Old Geelong Road
Hoppers Crossing, VIC
3029

Website

http://businessaddicts.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Business Addicts posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Business Addicts:

Want your business to be the top-listed business in Hoppers Crossing?