Privacy Policy

The Success Academy Group Pty Ltd (ABN 68 602 377 695), trading as Tradies Success Academy ("we", "us", "our"), provides business education, coaching and software to trade business owners. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, where it goes, and what you can do about it.

It covers everything we run:

• this website, tradies-success-academy.com, including the waitlist and event booking forms
• the Tradies App at member.tradies-success-academy.com and its iOS and Android versions
• the Claude connector at member.tradies-success-academy.com/mcp
• coaching, group sessions, live training, events and calls
• My App and done-for-you builds
• our sales and support conversations by phone, text, email and in-app message

We are bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs).

You can browse this website without telling us who you are, and you can ask a general question without giving your real name. You cannot use the Tradies App, our programs or our coaching anonymously, because we need to know who we are working with.

From the website. When you join the waitlist or book an event, what you enter in the form: your name, email, mobile, trade, role, business name, years trading, team size, service area, turnover and average job value, website and social links, the software and lead sources you use, and your answers about your business and goals. We also record the page you came from, any campaign tags in the link, a visitor identifier, and your IP address and browser details.

Your account. Your name, email, mobile, business name, trade, location, profile photo, and team details if you have team seats. If you enter an ABN or NZBN, we check it with the Australian Business Register or the New Zealand Companies Office and store the result. Sign-in codes are sent by text or email. If you turn on notifications, we store your device's push token.

Face ID, Touch ID and passkeys. No biometric information is ever sent to us. Your phone checks your face or fingerprint itself and sends us a cryptographic signature. We store only a public key and a credential identifier.

Business and financial information. What you enter or connect: revenue, costs, margins, wages, cash, tax set-asides, pricing, targets, your Fortnightly Focus and Strategy answers, tasks and projects. If you connect Xero, we retrieve reports from your Xero organisation. If you connect a job management system through My App, we retrieve your jobs, enquiries and timesheets each night.

Information about other people. Xero and job management data can include your customers' names and the amounts they owe, and your employees' names, pay rates, hours, wages and superannuation. We use it only to provide your own reports and tools. You are responsible for having the right to share it with us (see our Terms of Service). You can disconnect Xero or your job system at any time and ask us to delete what we hold from it.

Calls, meetings and coaching sessions. Recordings, transcripts, summaries, notes, tasks and assessments from coaching sessions, group sessions, live training, interviews, sales calls, in-app calls with your coach, and phone calls with us. The next section explains this in full.

Messages with us. Emails, texts and in-app messages you send Greg or our team, our replies, and when each was sent.

What you create in the app. Posts, comments, reactions, direct messages including voice notes, photos and files, questions you ask in Ask and the Learning Hub, voice input, searches, lesson reflections, bug reports and screenshots, and support conversations.

How you use the app. Every screen you open and how long you spend on it, what you tap, features used, lessons and videos watched and how far through, searches, points and streaks, errors, your device type and model, operating system, browser, screen size, app version and a session identifier, failed sign-in attempts and the IP address they came from, and when you are active (which shows other members who is online).

Your calendar. If you connect a Google or Microsoft calendar, we read your events' titles, times and locations to show them in the app, and add your Tradies App items to your calendar. You can disconnect it at any time.

Through the connector. What an AI assistant you connect sends us and what we send back, as set out in the section on AI assistants below.

Payments. Your billing name, email, phone, what you bought, payment status and history. Card payments are handled by Stripe and direct debits by GoCardless on their own secure pages. We never see your full card number or bank account number, but Stripe's records shared with us can include your card brand, the last four digits and the expiry date.

From public sources. When you apply for a program or book a call, we may look at your business's website and other public information about you and your business, including a web search, with the help of AI, so we come to the conversation prepared. We may also use your website's branding to draft a sample app for your business.

From other people. From payment providers, whether a payment worked. From your business, if someone invites you onto a team seat. From Meta, if you submit one of our lead forms there, and comments you leave on our ads, with your public name, which we analyse with AI to spot problems and questions.

We are explaining this plainly because it is the part people most deserve to understand. We do all of it for one reason: to support you better.

We record. Coaching sessions, group sessions, live training and calls with us are recorded and transcribed, including interviews and sales calls before you join, and in-app calls with your coach. Every Google Meet room we set up for coaching is set to record automatically. Calls between two members in the app are not recorded, and we do not read or use any transcript of them.

Where the recording goes. Google Meet recordings and transcripts are stored in our Google Workspace. Phone calls are recorded and transcribed by JustCall, which also writes its own AI summary of each call. Recordings without a transcript are transcribed by Deepgram. Some older sessions were recorded on Zoom or Fireflies. Session video can be hosted on Mux so you can watch it back.

We analyse calls with AI. Transcripts of coaching sessions, sales calls and phone calls are sent to Anthropic's Claude models to produce:

• a summary of the conversation, your priorities and your tasks
• notes and briefings for your coach and our team before your next call
• the things you asked for or we promised, which become tasks for our team so they are not forgotten
• a read of how the conversation went for you, including your mood and whether you may be thinking of leaving
• an assessment of the quality of our coaching and our sales calls

The analysis can flag when a conversation suggests you may be overwhelmed or need support, so that a person can check in with you.

We read and analyse messages. Messages you send Greg or our team, by email, text or in the app, are read by our team and analysed with AI so the right person picks them up, nothing is missed, and we notice wins, worries and requests for help. Greg's and our team's inboxes are sorted by AI, which can file or archive an email before a person reads it. Replies to our messages are checked for requests to stop contacting you. Voice notes and voice input in the app, including voice notes you send other members, are transcribed by OpenAI so they can be read as text. Messages between two members are not screened or scored by AI. They are stored in our database, and Greg and our team, and the AI tools they use to look up a member's record, can access them when that is needed to support you, keep the community safe or deal with a complaint. Community posts and comments are screened (see automated analysis below).

We record how you use our services. In the app we record every screen you open and how long you spend on it, what you tap, watch and search for, and your device, as set out above. On the website, our analytics and advertising tools record your visit (see cookies below). We use this to see what is helping you, notice when you have gone quiet so someone can check in, and fix faults.

We log the connector. Every request an AI assistant makes through our connector is logged, as set out in the section on AI assistants below.

Who sees it. You see your own session summary and tasks. Your coach and the people in our team who support you, including the person who ran a sales call with you, see the recordings, transcripts, messages and analysis. Group session replays are available to members of that group. We do not publish your recordings or use them in marketing without your agreement.

Your choices. If you do not want a session or call recorded, tell us before it starts and we will find another way to work with you. You can ask for a copy of a recording, transcript or assessment about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete a recording. If you would rather a session were not analysed with AI, tell us before it starts and we will not record it, so there is nothing to analyse. Email admin@academygroup.io.

Sensitive information includes health information, including mental health. We do not ask you for it and you never have to share it to get coaching.

Coaching conversations about a business under pressure can move into health, family and money worries on their own, so recordings, transcripts, messages and AI analysis can end up containing sensitive information. Where that happens:

• access is limited to your coach and the people who support your coaching
• we never use it for marketing, or to decide what you pay
• you can ask us to delete it, and we will, unless the law requires us to keep it

When a recording, message or AI analysis indicates how you are coping, for example that you seem overwhelmed or under strain, that can be health information. We use it only so that a person can check in with you and support you. You consent to this when you take part in our coaching. If you withdraw that consent, tell us and we will stop recording your sessions.

Some features used to invite members to log wellbeing measures. Those features are no longer in use. If you want to know what we held, or want it deleted, email us.

We use personal information to:

• support you better: prepare your coach before each session, follow up what was said and promised, and notice when you are stuck, quiet or need a hand, so that a person can check in
• create and run your account and give you the products, programs, coaching and events you signed up for
• assess applications for programs and events, and prepare for calls with you
• prepare for and follow up your coaching, including the recording and AI analysis described above
• run the community, messaging, Ask, the Learning Hub, the Claude connector, My App and our business tools
• take payments, manage subscriptions and keep financial records
• send you service messages, and marketing where the law allows (see marketing messages below)
• measure and improve our website, app, advertising, coaching and sales calls
• keep our services secure, prevent misuse and fix faults
• meet our legal obligations and deal with complaints and disputes

We may also turn questions members ask, and the teaching in our coaching sessions, into de-identified lessons and articles. Those do not name you or your business, and a person reviews each article before it is published.

If we want to use information for a purpose you would not reasonably expect, we will only do so where the law allows it or with your agreement.

You can connect your Tradies App account to an AI assistant such as Claude through our connector. When you do, you authorise that assistant to read and update your own Tradies App record on your behalf. How it works is set out at tradies-success-academy.com/claude-connector.

• What we collect: everything the assistant sends us when it uses the connector, for example a task, your Focus or Strategy answers, business figures you ask it to save, or a question you ask it to look up for you. We also keep a record of every tool it uses and when, the words it searches for, the results of what it saves, what you asked for and how it went in a build session, the name and version of the assistant app, and the sign-in tokens that keep the connection open. Tokens are stored only as one-way hashes.
• Search: the words the assistant searches for are sent to OpenAI to search our library.
• What we do not collect: your full conversations with the assistant, its memory, or your files. We only receive what the assistant sends to the connector, which can include your own words when it passes on a question or a request.
• How we use it: to provide the coaching and records you asked for, to keep your Tradies App up to date, to see which tools help members so we can improve them, and to fix faults in the connector.
• Retention: information saved through the connector is kept with the rest of your account under the Retention of Information section below. An access token expires after 45 minutes and a connection unused for 60 days ends. You can disconnect at any time in the Tradies App under Settings, Connected apps.
• The assistant provider: your conversations with the assistant are handled under that provider's own privacy policy, not this one.

We do not sell your personal information.

We share it with the service providers that run parts of our services for us, including website hosting, payment processing, email delivery, analytics, search and AI processing, call recording and transcription, and customer support. They may use it only to provide their services to us. These are the providers that receive personal information, and where they are:

Hosting and infrastructure

• Supabase: our database, sign-in and file storage. Sydney, Australia
• Netlify: hosts our website and app. United States
• Google: Google Workspace (email, calendar, in-app video calls, Meet recordings and transcripts, and stored files), your Google calendar if you connect it, and Google Fonts. United States
• Microsoft: Greg's email and calendar, and your Microsoft calendar if you connect it. United States

Payments and accounting

• Stripe: card payments and subscriptions. United States
• GoCardless: direct debit. United Kingdom
• Xero: our accounts and invoices, and your own Xero data if you connect it. New Zealand

Messages and calls

• Resend: email we send you. United States
• ClickSend: text messages, including sign-in codes. Australia
• JustCall: our phone system, text messages, call recordings, transcripts and call summaries. United States
• Apple and Google: push notifications to your phone. United States
• Bitly: short links in messages. United States
• Klipy: GIF search in messages. Location not confirmed

AI, search and transcription

• Anthropic (Claude): analysis of calls, coaching sessions and messages, sorting email, Ask, Focus and Strategy, task tools, moderation of community posts, AI-written replies and messages, research before a call, summaries of your figures, and our team's internal tools. United States
• OpenAI: library and connector search (your search text is sent to create a search entry), transcribing voice notes and voice input, and reading articles aloud. United States
• ElevenLabs: reading articles aloud. United States
• Google Cloud: reading member briefings aloud to our team. United States
• Deepgram: transcribing call and session recordings. United States
• Fireflies and Zoom: hold some older session recordings. United States

Video, community and marketing

• Mux: video hosting, playback, subtitles and viewing statistics. United States
• YouTube and Vimeo: videos embedded on our website. United States
• Google Analytics and Google Ads: website analytics and advertising. United States
• Meta (Facebook and Instagram): advertising, lead forms, and measuring which ads work, including sending Meta a scrambled (hashed) version of your email, phone and name, with your country, IP address and browser details. United States and Ireland
• HubSpot and Circle: systems we used previously. They still hold older records, and HubSpot is still updated when you register interest in some programs. United States

Government registers

• Australian Business Register and New Zealand Companies Office: checking a business number you give us. Australia and New Zealand

We also disclose personal information where the law requires it, to prevent serious harm, to our professional advisers, or to a buyer if our business is sold. If it is sold, we will tell you.

Our database is in Sydney, but most of the providers above are outside Australia, mainly in the United States, with others in the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand.

We take reasonable steps to make sure overseas providers handle your information consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles, through their contracts and terms with us. We remain responsible to you. If an overseas provider mishandles your information, you can complain to us and to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) as you would about anything we did ourselves.

We use automated systems, including AI, to:

• summarise and assess calls and coaching sessions (see recording above)
• read and sort messages and email sent to Greg and our team
• keep a profile of you and your business, written and updated with AI from what we know, so whoever you speak to is up to date
• estimate how engaged you are, your mood, and whether you may be about to leave, so that our team can check in
• research your business before a call
• draft messages, replies and community posts that come from Greg or our team
• screen community posts and comments
• choose which lessons, articles and prompts to show you

AI-written messages. Some messages, emails, texts and community replies that come from Greg or our team are written or drafted by AI using what we know about you and your business. Not every one is reviewed by a person before it is sent.

Moderation acts first. New posts and comments are screened automatically, and a post the system assesses as harmful is hidden from the feed straight away, before a person reviews it. If something you posted is hidden, ask us and a person will look at it.

Your access changes automatically when you buy, cancel or reach the end of a period you have paid for. Any other decision to suspend or end your membership, refuse you a service or change what you pay is made by a person. You can ask what a system has concluded about you, ask us to correct it, and ask a person to review it.

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies from Google Analytics, Google Ads and the Meta Pixel to measure visits and advertising. They record things like your IP address, browser, device, the pages you visit and the ad you came from. We also store campaign tags and a visitor identifier in your browser so we know which marketing brought you to us. YouTube and Vimeo set their own cookies when you play an embedded video.

When you sign up, book a call or pay us, including through the Tradies App, our server tells Meta, sending a scrambled (hashed) version of your email, phone, name and country, with your IP address, browser details and, for a payment, the amount, so Meta can tell which ad brought you.

These load when you arrive on the site. We do not yet have a cookie choice banner. You can block or delete cookies in your browser at any time, and the site still works. You can also control ad personalisation in your Google and Meta account settings.

The Tradies App itself does not load advertising pixels. It records how the app is used for our own purposes (see what we collect above), and Mux records video viewing statistics.

Service messages are about your account and what you have bought: sign-in codes, receipts, billing, session reminders and messages from your coach. You keep receiving these while you have an account.

Marketing messages tell you about programs, events or content. You can opt out at any time:

• email: use the unsubscribe link, or change your preferences in the app
• text: reply STOP
• or email admin@academygroup.io

We action opt-outs within 5 business days and keep a record so we do not contact you again by mistake.

Other members can see your name, photo, trade and business name on your profile, what you post or comment in spaces they can see, your place on the Crew Leaderboard, and whether you are active in the app. There is no switch in the app for the leaderboard or the active indicator yet. Email us and we will remove you from either.

Other members cannot see your financial figures, direct messages, coaching recordings or transcripts, or your private tasks.

Your coach and our team can see your financial figures, tasks and session history. The Finance page has a "share with coach" setting, which does not yet limit what your coach can see. If you want your figures kept from your coach, email us.

We protect your information with encrypted connections, database access rules, private file storage with links that expire, and staff access limited to what each person needs. Connector tokens are stored as one-way hashes, and Xero connection tokens are stored in an encrypted vault.

Profile photos are an exception: they are stored at a public web address, so anyone with the link can view one. Photos and files you send in direct messages are kept private, but they are sent as you took them, so if your camera adds location details to photos, those details travel with the photo.

No system is perfectly secure. If we suspect a data breach, we will assess it promptly, and in any case within 30 days. If it is likely to cause serious harm, we will notify the people affected and the OAIC as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.

We keep personal information for as long as we need it to provide our services and for the purposes in this policy, and then delete or de-identify it.

• Account, profile and app content: while your account is open, then deleted or de-identified when you ask us to delete your account (see deleting your account below).
• Financial and tax records: 7 years, because tax and corporations law requires it, even if you ask us to delete your account.
• Recordings, transcripts, messages and analysis: while you are with us and for as long as we need them for your coaching, our records and resolving any dispute. We have not yet set a fixed deletion period. You can ask us to delete a recording at any time.
• App and connector usage records: while your account is open, then deleted or de-identified with the rest of your account.
• Connected accounts: connection tokens are deleted when you disconnect.
• Marketing preferences: kept so we respect an opt-out.

Where other members' conversations depend on something you wrote, we may de-identify it rather than delete it, so their threads still make sense.

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, including recordings, transcripts, messages and any assessment about you, and you can ask us to correct anything that is wrong. Email admin@academygroup.io. There is no charge. We will respond within 30 days. If we refuse, we will tell you why in writing and how to complain.

If we do not agree to a correction, you can ask us to attach a note saying you believe the information is wrong, and we will.

Email admin@academygroup.io, or message us in the app, and ask us to delete your account. We will confirm it is you, then delete or de-identify your personal information, except records the law requires us to keep, and tell you what we kept and why.

If you think we have mishandled your information, tell us first. Email admin@academygroup.io with "Privacy complaint" in the subject line. We will acknowledge it within 5 business days and give you a full response within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.

Our services are for adults running a business. You must be 18 or over to use them. We do not knowingly collect information from children, and if we find we have, we will delete it.

We will update this policy when our services change. If we make a significant change to how we use your information, we will tell you directly, not only by changing the date at the top.

Privacy Officer: Greg Allan
The Success Academy Group Pty Ltd (ABN 68 602 377 695)
Unit 27-28/5 Easy St, Byron Bay NSW 2481
Email: admin@academygroup.io
Phone: 0489 270 215