The EntourageHobart Business Growth Boardroom

AI that actually does the work.

What a Tasmanian real estate business learned building its own AI team.

Presented byBrad Reeves

Session45 minutes, then the panel with Andrew Morello

Wrest Point, HobartTuesday 10 November 2026

OverviewWhat we'll cover

Five parts, forty-five minutes.

Part one
Meet PennyAn AI employee doing a real job, so you know what "AI doing the work" means before we go further.
Part two
The ladderFour rungs. Wherever you sit with AI today, you can place yourself and see where the return is.
Part three
My philosophyHow we actually use it, and why nobody on the team has had to learn to build.
Part four
What we've built, and what it cost us to learnYour own desk, the books, customer paperwork and the database. Then the five lessons.
Part five
How to startA simple test to find the one job worth handing over first, and the job description for your first AI employee. Use the lined pages in your workbook.

Chatting with AI is not AI doing the work.

The value is in the processes you hand over, not the questions you ask.

Before we startWho is talking

Engineer. Developer. Agency owner. AI builder.

Sixteen years leading engineering, safety and IT at Tasmanian Alkaloids. Full time in my own businesses since 2023. I am not a software person.

89Dwellings delivered or under construction

14Development projects

3Agency offices on the NW Coast

The two businesses

Brooklyn Bradley. Property development, and the AI products.
Harcourts Coastline. Largest agency on the North West Coast. Rent roll tripled, revenue doubled, in three years.
An in-house AI team. Builds the software both businesses run on.

01

Part one

Meet Penny.

Most businesses have tried ChatGPT. Very few have put AI to work.

Meet PennyAn AI employee

She answers the phone. She is not a person.

We manage three self storage facilities. Penny answers every enquiry, quotes the right unit, books the customer and chases the arrears. The team never hears the phone ring.

Inbound

Every call answered. Size, price, access, the same way every time.

Outbound

Arrears chased, the waitlist called back when a unit frees up.

Hand-off

Complaints and anything she is unsure about go to a person, with the transcript.

Ulverstone Secure Storage page with Penny, the AI storage assistant, live in the corner

24/7Calls answered

0Calls reaching the team

Meet PennyHer job description

We hired her the way you would hire a person.

Before anything was built, Penny had a job description. You will write one for your business in part five.

Job title	Storage enquiries and bookings agent
The job, in one sentence	Answer every storage enquiry, quote the right unit and book the customer in.
Inputs: what she needs to know	Unit sizes, availability, prices, facility rules, access hours.
Tools: what she can touch	The phone line, website chat, the booking system.
Hand-off: when a human steps in	Complaints, unusual requests, anything she is not sure about.
Manager: who checks her work	The storage manager reviews bookings and conversations.
Measure: how we know it is working	Enquiries answered, bookings made, after-hours coverage.

02

Part two

The ladder.

Four rungs. Most owners are on the first. The return is on the third and fourth.

The ladderWhere does your business sit today?

Ask. Assist. Automate. Employ.

The value sits in the processes you hand over, not the questions you ask. Everything we have built lives on rungs three and four.

Which rung are you on today? Which one do you want in twelve months?

03

Part three

My philosophy.

Three principles behind everything we build.

My philosophyWhy use AI

Why use AI?

The hype says AI will replace us. Maybe it will. I would rather treat it as a threat and get ahead of it than bet the business that it won't. So I keep it practical.

The what

Efficiency and revenue. Cut waste, time and cost on one side, add revenue on the other. Both feed profit.

The how

A better customer experience. Automate the work that never touches a customer. Give people the time for the work that does.

My philosophyHow this actually works

I don't write code. I describe what I want.

Everything you are about to see was built with Claude Code. I brief it in plain English, the way I would brief a person. It writes the code.

Every weekday at 8:30, open the accounting software, match the bank transactions against these rules, code them, and tell me anything you are not sure about. That is the whole instruction. No syntax, no training course.

If you can explain a process to a new hire, you can build it. The hard part was never the code. It is knowing your business well enough to describe it.

0Lines of code I have written

My philosophyHow this actually works

I've never asked the team to go learn AI.

That is deliberate. Instead, we build the tool, and they use it inside the workflow they already have.

The commercial angle

Everything we build sits inside a separate business. If it is valuable to us it is valuable to someone else, so anything of real substance gets commercialised.

Why build, not train

Guardrails. The tool defines the job, so the output is consistent.
Data safety. Nothing sensitive gets pasted into random tools.
Adoption. Nobody has to become an AI person to get the benefit.
Focus. The team stays on their job.

My philosophyHow this actually works

You don't need to be the AI expert.

But you do have to be the driving force. One genuine expert is enough. Your edge is knowing how the business runs, and it only happens if you push it through.

YouThe process expert, and the driving force

+

An AI expertKnows what is possible, and how

=

Real efficiencyGains neither of you get alone

And we are not ripping anything out

Your CRM, your accounting software, your job system all stay. We close the gaps between them and drop AI in where a person used to be.

04

Part four

What we've built.

Your desk, the books, customer paperwork, the database. Each one used to be a person's job.

What we've built01 Your own desk

Start with your own desk.

Hand over your own admin first. Ask of every task: how can AI do this for me?

Daily brief

Calendar, priorities and overnight email, summarised before I am at my desk.

Email triage

Every email read and sorted, invoices sent to the books, replies drafted in my voice.

Daily call list

Who to ring today, on my phone at 7:30, with the notes from last time.

7amBrief ready

5 hrsSaved per week

The morning brief, delivered to Brad's phone in Telegram

This is the work an EA would do. The EA is now AI.

What we've built02 The books

The books, reconciled overnight.

The easiest place to prove the value, because the rules are already written down.

AI bookkeeper

Invoices read from email and filed in Xero and MYOB. Bank transactions matched and coded overnight.

Month end and payroll

Reconciliations, commissions and payroll prepared for a person to approve. A report tells me what needs me.

8+Entities automated

8:30amMonday to Friday

MYOB bank transactions being coded by the AI bookkeeper

A person still approves every payment. AI prepares. People decide.

What we've built03 Customer paperwork

Forms and agreements, without the re-typing.

For us it is offers and agency agreements. For you, quotes, job sheets, applications, contracts. Structure it once and it runs itself.

One link per customer

A link texted to the buyer. Every detail captured once, compiled into one dashboard, reported without re-keying.

Guided agreement flow

The agreement as a step-by-step flow. The same standard every time, whoever runs it.

The sales app offers dashboard: every offer across every property in one place

1Link for every customer

0Manual re-keying

What we've built04 The database

The database refresh.

Every business has a database full of people it has not spoken to in years. Penny Prospector works through ours, coldest first, every morning.

7am, a card in Teams

The agent's coldest contacts, checked and filtered. How many today?

The agent ticks the names

Thirty seconds. That is the whole human job.

Penny does the rest

Market update by text, the agent's voicemail dropped, a note on every CRM record, a report back.

Penny's morning shortlist card in Teams: five contacts ready, with the reasons others were left out

Penny's report card: three market updates sent, one held back, and why

25Contacts a day, per agent

30 secOf the agent's time

What we've builtWhat we learned the hard way

Five lessons that cost us time to learn.

Document the process first.	AI amplifies a clear process and a messy one alike.
Data access is the real bottleneck.	Check what your systems let you connect to before you pick a project.
Silent failure is the biggest risk.	An automation that stops quietly is worse than none. Make every system report in.
Keep a human approval step.	AI prepares, a person approves. Money, people and customers especially.
Build capability, not just tools.	Grow the people alongside the software.

If you can't write it down, AI can't do it yet.

Every AI employee starts as a job description.

05

Part five

How to start.

Find the one job worth handing over first, and write its job description. Open the lined pages in your workbook.

How to startWhat should I automate first?

Assess each task with these three questions.

One

Is it repeated?

Something you or your team do the same way, again and again.

Two

Is it rules based?

Could you explain it to a new hire on their first day?

Three

Is it resource heavy?

It costs you real time, or real money, every time it is done.

Then prioritise

Many tasks will qualify. Prioritise by resource load, and group tasks that share steps. The best first candidate is high volume, rule based, and its data already sits in a system.

How to startExercise one · Task audit

List the recurring jobs. Score each one.

List the recurring jobs in your business. Score each column one to five, hours capped at five. Add them up. Circle your top three.

Recurring task	Who does it	Hrs / week	Rules based 1 to 5	Data in a system 1 to 5	Score
Answering after-hours enquiries	Office admin	6	4	5	14
Coding the bank feed	Bookkeeper	4	5	5	14
Chasing quotes that went quiet	Owner	3	3	4	10
Yours

How to startExercise two · Design your first AI employee

Write the job description for your top-scoring task.

	Penny, storage enquiries	Your AI employee
Job title	Storage enquiries and bookings agent
The job, in one sentence	Answer every storage enquiry, quote the right unit and book the customer in.
Inputs: what it needs to know	Unit sizes, availability, prices, facility rules, access hours.
Tools: what it can touch	Phone line, website chat, booking system.
Hand-off: when a human steps in	Complaints, unusual requests, anything it is not sure about.
Manager: who checks its work	Storage manager reviews bookings and conversations.
Measure: how you know it is working	Enquiries answered, bookings made, after-hours coverage.

How to startYour 30-day plan

Four weeks. One task. Keep, fix or drop.

Week 1

Finish the task audit with your team. Agree the one task to start with.

Week 2

Document that process step by step, including the exceptions.

Week 3

Build or trial an AI version alongside the person doing it now.

Week 4 · decide

Compare results. Keep, fix or drop. Pick the next task.

The three ideas to take away

Start with one boring job you already understand. Every AI worker needs a manager: a human check, and a way to know when it has stopped.

Go furtherHands-on AI workshop · Hobart · December

Leave with your first AI employee built, not just designed.

A working day for owners who want AI doing the work. Bring your task audit and job description. Leave with the first version running.

$999Per seat

$550Register your interest today

Register your interest before you leave the room and the seat is $550. It commits you to nothing.

ai.bradreeves.com.au/workshop

Thank you

What will you automate first?

Brad Reevesbrad@brooklynbradley.com

ReevesBrooklyn Bradley · Harcourts Coastline

Workshopai.bradreeves.com.au/workshop