Sales & marketing support for agribusiness. Ai Strategy & Deployment: branding, digital, coaching. Drive growth & connections.
Wangaratta, Victoria
Joined April 2010
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Jamie Ramage retweeted
A water truck went out in regional New South Wales this week:
The customer was already buying the load because of drought.
292.5 cents a litre. ABC's average across petrol stations at 9pm last night, in New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania and the Territory. I am in Wangaratta. Victoria is not in that sample. Same distance problem here.
In a capital city that is a dearer commute. For a carter, a freight run, or a sparky covering three towns, the litre is the margin. Pass the rise on and you can lose a customer who is already short. Keep yesterday's price and Friday's book will not match the tank.
The survival use of AI this week is not a clever demo. It is a check that runs before the key turns: fuel allowance on the job versus this morning's pump price. If the gap swallows the margin, you ring them with the new number while the load is still in the yard.
If diesel moved overnight, which job would you still run at yesterday's price?
Jamie Ramage retweeted
July's Fair Work bill was $34 million. Most of it was not small business:
UNSW repaid over $32M to more than 33,000 staff.
Yooralla repaid $2.05M to 1,389 disability workers.
A northern NSW wheat farm operator was ordered to pay $110,447 after ignoring a Compliance Notice.
Universities and national providers with full payroll teams still got awards wrong. The farm got hit hardest for stalling.
That is the part regional owners should sit with.
If you run a cafe in Launceston, a workshop in Toowoomba, or a service business in the Waikato, you are often the payroll department. July brought a 4.75% award rise. Casual loadings. Penalty rates. Public holidays. Payday Super every cycle. One misread clause stacks for months before anyone notices.
Fair Work Ombudsman told the COSBOA Summit last week that payroll calculations still drive a big share of workplace contraventions. Not malice. Systems.
AI will not decide the right classification for you. It will check the rate against the current award before six months of quiet underpayment becomes a letter from the regulator.
How confident are you in last month's pay run — really?
Jamie Ramage retweeted
The hesitation is understandable. But the businesses that waited two years to try one thing all said the same thing after: wish we'd done it sooner.
EYCI hit 1,000 cents this week. Trade lamb and mutton both at record levels.
Good money if you’re selling right now.
But here’s the part nobody says out loud.
A strong market hides everything. When prices run this hot, the back of the truck looks the same whether you’ve done the work or not. Average stock and good stock both clear.
That’s the trap.
The years you make the most money are often the years you learn the least about your own operation.
Right now, tightening supply is doing the heavy lifting on price. Not your genetics. Not your management. Worth being honest about that.
When supply comes back, and it will, the gap between operations that built something and ones that just rode the wave gets wide fast.
So where’s the money going this season?
Better rams and bulls that actually shift your numbers? Fixing the bottleneck that’s cost you weaners or lambs for years? Or just covering last year’s hole?
Here’s the move most producers miss.
A good year buys you room to get your data sorted. The tools that tell you which animals are actually paying their way. Weight gain. Fertility. The real cost of carrying a passenger.
Most run on gut feel and a notebook.
Gut feel gets expensive when the margin tightens.
The producers who know their numbers cold are the ones who’ll buy and sell with confidence while everyone else is guessing.
A record market is the best time to fix the thing you’ve been putting off. You can finally afford it.
It’s also the easiest time to talk yourself out of it. Everything feels fine.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
Freight brokers in Albury spending hours formatting rate sheets for clients. One template automation. Consistent, professional output every time. No more formatting errors.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
The question isn't whether AI is right for regional business. It's which part of your business would benefit most from a bit less human intervention.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
If your business relies on one person knowing where everything is, that's not a system. That's a risk. AI doesn't fix that alone, but it makes building the system a lot easier.
Every business owner who puts off their first AI implementation because it feels too soon has made a call. The manual processes stay. The hours stay lost. Nobody signs off on it, but the decision got made.
The jobs list you should have automated six months ago is still running on spreadsheets and phone calls because changing it felt like the harder move. So you chose the easy one. The cost shows up in your team’s week, not your invoices.
The hardest decisions in a farm or small business are the ones where standing still looks safe. It almost never is. Manual systems don’t hold their place. They get left behind.
What’s the call you’ve been avoiding because doing nothing felt easier?
Jamie Ramage retweeted
Real Example
Vet clinics in Wangaratta sending appointment reminders manually. 20 minutes every afternoon. An automated SMS sequence cuts no-shows and gives that time back. Every single day.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
Observation
Distance is a real disadvantage for regional businesses. But admin inefficiency isn't geography. It's a solvable problem anywhere.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
The right AI implementation doesn't have to be expensive. Under $200/month to run. Six hours a week back. Do that maths over a year.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
Regional HR consultancies spending Monday mornings compiling reports by hand. That job can run overnight. Open your inbox Monday and it's already done.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
Automation isn't about doing more. It's about not doing the same thing again. There's a difference.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
Wodonga electrical contractors drowning in compliance paperwork is common. Automated job dockets, inspections logged on-site, certificates out same day. The ute stops being an office.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
Most business owners already know exactly what's slowing them down. They just haven't had someone sit down and help them do something about it.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
Start with one workflow that frustrates your team every week. Fix that. See what happens. You don't need a strategy. You need a first step.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
A transport company near Wodonga with no consistent process for driver incident reports. Staff typing the same form 30 times a month. An automated template fixes that immediately.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
AI won't replace your team. It will take the tasks your team resents doing, so they can focus on the work that actually needs a human.
Jamie Ramage retweeted
A rural real estate office in Benalla manually copying inspection notes into their CRM. 45 minutes every open home. Voice-to-text transcription solves it. One week to set up.