Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Ronsley Vaz on Team Building, the School of Hard Knocks and the Value of Freedom

Episode Date: March 25, 2018

Our guest for the inaugural episode of the Get Invested Podcast is the founder of Amplify Marketing Agency, Ronsley Vaz. Beyond founding Amplify, Ronsley is the host of Bond Appetit and Should I Start A Podcast, which collectively have over four million listeners in 145 countries. He also sits on the board for freetoshine.org, an organisation that works to prevent sex trafficking. Ronsley is an entrepreneur with an extremely diverse background ranging from DJing to financial advising to cooking to software development. Ronsley is an inspiring figure, a leader, mentor to many different people and an all-around good bloke. In our conversation, we talked about his journey, philosophy and the story behind Amplify. We also touched on pivotal moments in his career, lessons learned and what really makes him tick. Listen to the full episode to hear all this, plus things like: Freedom defined, and why it's so incredibly important to this generation Why standardised education indoctrinates people into a fixed mindset The biggest compliment Ronsley ever received Why the ‘if you build it they will come’ is a false way to think The power of relationships and good conversations How to successfully marry commercial and artistic interests Ronsley’s investment advice to his younger self How to overcome the resistance of doing difficult things   Links   LinkedIn Amplify Marketing Agency We Are Podcast Bond Appetite Should I Start a Podcast Ronsley’s book, Amplify: Raise Your Voice, Boost Your Brand and Grow Your Business Free to ShineSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ladies and gentlemen and fellow Freedom Fighters, this is Bushy Martin from KnowHow Property Finance and welcome to the very first episode of the Get Invested podcast. Today you're going to have the pleasure of listening to the Honourable Ronsley Vaz on how he's invested in people potential to become an overnight entrepreneurial success. You see, investment means many different things to different people, but in this very first inaugural episode, you're going to learn all about one of the most important investments you'll ever make for potential people. In talking to Ronsley, who I've known for quite some time now, you'll find that he's

host of Australia's number one food podcast, Bon Appetit. He's author of the great book, Amplify, Raise Your Voice, Boost Your Brand and Grow Your Business, and he's founder of the Digital Amplifier Agency. Ronsley's bread and butter is very much audio. He's helped businesses build huge marketing ecosystems by harnessing the power of conversation. But if you dig a little deeper, it's clear that his real expertise lies in building strong and global teams. From Bahrain to India to Australia, Ronsley's had a very colourful journey. He's worked as a software engineer, a financial advisor, a DJ and a restaurateur,

and unsurprisingly, he's picked up plenty of hacks and tricks along the way to know what makes and what breaks. of business. Here, he reveals all, sharing the investments you need to make if you want to thrive in an ever-changing entrepreneurial landscape. In the episode, we get into the power of human potential and why you need to understand it in order to build a top team around you. We talk about the value of freedom, what millennials bring to the table and how you can harness their abilities. We talk about the problem with the build it and they will come model and the marketing solution you need to know that actually works. We understand why Ron's League values conversation so much and why podcasting is so hot right now.

This is an awesome discussion. I know that if you're an aspiring employee or a time poor professional, you're going to get a massive amount out of this. So sit back and relax and enjoy the conversation. Before we get into it, if you're a time poor professional who's interested in investing but don't have the time, you don't have the expertise, you don't know where to start, and don't know who to trust, then grab a copy of my book, The Freedom Formula, that gives you all of the know-how.

You can check it out at www.bushymartin.com.au or email me at hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au and mention Get Invested for a special bonus. I might add that all of the proceeds of the book are going to Living It Rough and Doing It Tough, a really dedicated group who provide for the needs of the homeless and their pets so please get involved and now i hope you enjoy this interview it only makes sense because we're on this wave of disruption and if all our clients are disruptors as well then we just

enable the wave right uh again we don't we genuinely don't know what it looks like in hindsight everything in the past and everyone says success and um it doesn't matter if it was an overnight success or it took 10 years to make. They all look like great decisions. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how on where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. You see, the truth is that everyone invests. Every minute of every day, we're investing our time, our skills, our energy, and our money in something.

Some of us are investing consciously, some unconsciously, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, and sometimes for no impact. Get Invested will help you to start living by design, not by default. I'm going to help you to make it happen,

not let it happen. You will hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now. listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started make the most of your investment journey and ultimately to be living your dream not someone else's more episodes can be found on

itunes or bushymartin.com.au forward slash get invested thanks for listening and now let's get invested let's uh invite the honorable the very great the man the legend the man behind the microphone, Ronsley Vaz, to invest in. What's up, dude? Great to see you, mate. I'm really excited about this opportunity, being the first of many and having the opportunity to be in such great company. Welcome aboard.

I feel humbled that you're happy to come and join me. I really want to dig into your journey in terms of what you've invested your time. I'm happy to pop your cherry, dude. That's what I do. I'll be smiling all the way, mate. No groaning, but then you're smiling. So I hear under the radar that you've been born in Bahrain. I was born in the Middle East.

Tell me about that. I get patted down in every white person country that I go. In the States, they love to randomly find me as someone they need to look into. I haven't got cavity checked yet, but I don't think… I don't think that that's far too far away. I've mentally prepared myself. You're watching for the rubber gloves. Yeah, every time they get close to any gloves,

sometimes without, I don't know. Anyway, yeah, born in Bahrain. I was there from year one and then year two to year 12. I studied in Goa in India. Yeah, and then on to Australia. So I hear your superhero is Batman. Why? Because he always does the right thing.

He does the right thing. It doesn't matter how difficult the situation is. He always manages to do the right thing. It doesn't matter whether he loses in making that decision, but it's the right decision. And that's a metaphor for you? That's how you approach life? That is.

Yeah, it's a great coach. At every step of the way, I want to be able to make the right decision. And sometimes I don't necessarily know. I don't have all the information, but with the information I have, I want to make the right decision at the time. and a lot of the times hindsight can prove that to be the wrong decision

but at the time I know that I've made based on what information I have. Yeah, let's dive deep there straight away. So tell me about a time when you've forgotten your bat belt and you've made a decision that hasn't ended up going the way you thought. Can you talk to us about that? I don't think I've ever forgotten my bat belt. I think at every step of the way I make the decision that I think is the right decision

but on making a decision you learn so much stuff down the down down the road that you can go back in hindsight and say oh i could have made that decision differently yeah so at every step of the way i try with the information i have to make the right decision yeah irrespective of whether i'm benefiting from that or not yeah okay okay well let's let's drill into your journey bit on that So, I guess the first thing that was interesting to me, given knowing how creative and strategic thinking you are, is that on leaving high school, you decided to do a Bachelor of Engineering, which in my own biased way often put engineers in the batshit boring brigade. Talk to me about what led you in that direction. Well, when I was going through university, I think there were not many computer engineers around.

It was like something new. So I excel in those areas where no one's done stuff in that area before because there's no way someone can judge me in the field. And there's no way to judge myself either. So I can actually just go and learn the craft. So I feel like I get a superpower every time I learn something new. Um, and I was always told that I was a technical person, like right up until maybe eight years ago, I was six years ago, not even six years ago, maybe four years ago.

I, I believed, genuinely believed in my heart that I was a technical person. Is that because of what people told you or what you personally believed? I think it was a mixture of both. I think it was because from an academic standpoint, it pointed in the direction of me being technical in terms of the marks that I got and the kind of career path that I chose. It was not difficult for me to get into engineering,

which is hard to get into, especially in India. it was almost like this in India it's really weird they think that you have to have the aptitude to do technical stuff and I think from the very start they kind of put everyone in this technical box which means they're smarter than everyone else

but when you look back and you kind of go my sister went through that and she didn't enjoy that process of being labelled a technical person And when she is actually a creative person, she does these beautiful drawings. But her first stance was, you know, she was forced to kind of, not forced.

I think society forced her to do science in year 11 and she didn't do really well. Then she had to do it again. And the next level was commerce because that's what people think. They think that if you can't do science, then you do commerce. You can't do commerce, then you do arts.

That's the way they think in India. yeah well it's no different here yeah well so it's it's even worse there right uh so they kind of go uh if you say i'm i'm i'm i'm doing you know uh year 11 arts they'll be like why didn't you get did you get good marks together the science is the immediate question it just feels like that's the next question that they ask you um interesting so i think from that standpoint And based on the way society looked at me and the things I had achieved in school, they thought I was a technical person.

I had not even exercised my creativity. I did to an extent because I was always in general proficiency. I was the only geek that was in the sports teams and I was the only sportsman in the elocution debate. So in that sense, I was creative, but it was only seen as an extracurricular activity. It wasn't seen as a skill. It was just like you're going through school.

That's not a real job. That's not a real job. However, my dad gave me an option in year 10 because I was playing badminton for the state and dad was the manager of the Indian badminton team. Wow. And he said to me, if you want to be a sportsman, then you can become the number one Indian sportsman. But you've got to stop school.

He gave me that option. And I was too chicken. So I said, no, I'll just go through school. So in year 10, he gave me that option. So the engineering thing is probably the safe road for you at that time, do you think? No. So my dad has been the entrepreneur in my family, in our family. I think he got it from his grandmother.

I never saw myself as an entrepreneur ever until very recently. What is an entrepreneur? Someone that solves meaningful problems. Someone that creates value. But I had to go through my own journey of learning what an entrepreneur really is as well. Yeah. so I always thought I was a 9 to 5 person

my dad always wanted me to take over the business and I said I just want to go to work and come back I don't want to take the stress of running a business and that kind of stuff

because I saw my dad build from nothing I saw my dad my first memories of dad was he used to wash dishes down the road and we used to just have a mattress on the floor

we didn't have any furniture in the house and then the next step was we had an air conditioner because we were in Bahrain because the weather is so hot. And then we got sofas and then we got all that kind of stuff

and then we got a bed. So, I don't know. I suppose I didn't really know what entrepreneurship was. So, I just thought, you know, nine to five, climb the corporate ladder. I didn't even know

whether I thought of corporate as corporate. Like, I didn't have enough information to make that decision. Not uncommon though. It's like, get a skill, be good at that and find a job that's going to pay the bills so totally totally it's everyone's natural default thinking so what

changed that obviously for that for a while that something must have happened that uh disrupted your thinking and gave you the courage to do something else what was it well um after i came to australia i did a master's of software engineering here at griffith and my first job out of there was to um i worked at an auto guidance company based in brisbane and they were based down in Western. I think they're still there, but they were really cool. Like the tractors would wake up in the morning

and plow the field and come and park itself back. This was like 2004, 2005. So this was long before, you know, autonomous vehicles were a thing like they are now. We did that for defense and, you know, oil rigs and Sandvik and all those companies. Interesting stuff. in different um and i pitched them the idea that that my thesis was on on building a quality

process so i did my thesis on quality processes okay um how to implement quality processes within a business and then um they were looking to sell because they got to this point of like they couldn't grow anymore yeah and they were just not getting the right price so i said how about we get you guys ISO 9001 accredited so the software firm has got like this accreditation of a software quality process. So we got them accredited. They got bought over by a company

on the Canadian Stock Exchange. And then overnight I became a global quality manager which I didn't even know what that meant. And then they paid for an MBA which I did at QUT. and then doing that in my first lecture three-hour lecture which was management principles yeah i walked across the goodwill bridge a different person like i saw opportunities everywhere it was really weird yeah okay so what did the nba give you that that was that awakening moment what what you think uh suddenly opened your mind um the the ability to look at something and see that

you can solve a problem that someone doesn't even know there's an issue. So until that point, I kind of didn't know that I could do it myself. I didn't know that I could solve the problem myself.

I didn't know that I could be empowered to think critically in a way that I could solve a meaningful problem that someone was having and they would benefit by me solving that problem. Yes.

So it was that flick, I think, that happened. Right. That's from the journey you've gone on since then. That's a pretty big switch, I think, that flicked on right there. Yeah, I think that the more I'm in business, the more I realize that our only job is to better what we've been given. you know we've been given a bunch of talents and a platform and a bunch of experiences and we need to take that and make the most that we can with it everyone's trying to navigate through life

everyone's trying their own way to navigate through this thing that they call life and we all do it in these different ways depending on what platform we've been given yeah what experiences have we got when we start the journey yes and and how can we be more resourceful with what we have beautiful yeah yeah that's and that's if you've just defined investment because that's what investment is it's it's taking the skills you have the resources you have available the time that you can put into something to then make unconsciously or consciously a decision to use those in a certain way so yeah okay so uh you've done the mba yeah uh obviously a critical watershed at that point in time what did that spark so where were you investing your time

energy and skills from that point on i was looking i was constantly looking for while i was doing the mba on how to make my job redundant okay and at the time i was reporting to the vp of engineering and he'd been around for like 17 or 19 years and i was like i'm not sticking around to get his job like that was just you know like i didn't see that as a as a path um yeah so uh i had met i had met this guy um multiple times his name was john uh as well and he saw something in me which i you know i didn't really know and he gave me this book called what i wish i learned at school but i what i wish what i should have learned at school but i wish i had or something like that yeah yeah

and i read that that was my first self-help book okay and i read that book and i went wait a minute what like i can improve my life by getting information that that's weird like i've always been thought that if you want to learn something you get a degree certificate at the end you know you know it's it's so that was a big shift for me um and he offered me so they were just they were financial advising firm they bought the deloitte's books for financial advising uh they were based in newcastle they wanted to open the brisbane office and he wanted me to run the brisbane office and i said i don't even know what financial advising is and he's like oh don't worry will pay for an RG146,

which is, you know, financial advising. Yeah. So what did he see in you that someone completely outside of that industry that he thought had some potential? I think he saw that I could make him a lot of money. Okay. As simple as that?

If I had to break it down. Yeah. I think that answer might change over time or would have changed if you asked me a few years ago. But if I had a distillate right now, I think he saw that I could make him money. Okay. And why did he think that?

What did he see in you that led him to believe that you'd make him a lot of money? See, I wish I knew and wish I had more time to ask him these questions because obviously I've gotten better at asking questions after the fact. And I know more now with hindsight since. so what would you say then so we don't know what he i think i think i think i was i was malleable

i could i could be i was i was hungry to know more so i could be shaped i could be shaped yeah i feel like maybe that's what that's what he wanted to invest in and he could shape me to um run what he thought was the way business should be run do you invest in relationships heavily yeah heavily that's probably the only thing i invest in more more than anything else okay if i if you ask me what do you invest in the most i'd say relationships okay okay and how how's that benefit you to date you think i i don't necessarily think that that that i do it to benefit me i think yeah well no sorry let me rephrase it i think i do get a lot of energy about investing in relationships because i get energy at the time but i don't necessarily think that

that i know or look forward to or have a plan for what it might bring in the future okay so i don't have that yeah um i detach from all of that stuff yeah for me it's more about who and where i can have good conversations right everything else is secondary right yeah right so if you looked at your journey to date is conversations what you invest in yeah by a long shot long shot i think i get and they can't be superficial no um i can only do that for a certain for a little bit of time yeah um as an example i can't i can't i can't hang around in in india for longer than you know a month at the most because there everyone talks about people or or events and i i can only do that for so long yeah and they they genuinely don't know how to talk about anything else other

than do you know what happened to this person right and and it's just what they're exposed to you know they don't know any and they then mom and dad will still say to me like if we don't talk about that what do you want us to talk about we should just keep quiet they actually said those words to me seriously yeah yeah because they don't even know how to discuss wow um there's a death of thought yeah yeah you see you sort of really from very from very young your thought not to think okay and that's part of the indian culture you think i think it's part of standardized testing in general so standardized testing in any school teaches you to not think okay it teaches you to kind of learn what has or stand on the shoulders of whatever's been done before and not necessarily

put any thought into that it's only when you get maybe you know into a research sort of sphere where they kind of say to you okay first you do your um your research on what's been done before and then you build on that but until that point even then it's it's not it's not drastic it's not like a big change it's just like an incremental change on what body of knowledge is already existing um so i think standardized testing whether it's in first world or third world or second world or whatever else standardized testing forces you to not think okay especially critically think because you're told that this is the subject matter and these are the questions answer based on the subject matter you're not kind of going you're not giving you a situation

that you have concepts which you can apply the concepts to yes so you're not allowed to put yourself in that situation sure okay because it's too threatening makes people uncomfortable they don't know how to they're not sure how to measure you yeah based on because they don't know how to measure you so they they put you in this box that they can because they then now they know how to measure you yes they have a skill not in a box they're going to try and put you in one anyway yeah yeah that's that's why they yeah and and you've clearly become more and more comfortable with being outside of the box or throwing the box away given what i've i've seen of your journey it's taken a long time yeah um what's giving you that confidence to to take the road less traveled

my wife your wife she's the rock pretty much okay i think she's my biggest fan Yeah, I think there's a lot of big fans out there. Yeah, well, I think she believed in me before I believed in myself or anyone else believed in me. Okay, okay. And something I've been observing with my wife, Sonia, on your journey because we're very fussy about who we allow into the fold. And while I hear you talking about conversations as what you invest in,

I think conversations seems like just the means of access and I'd challenge you perhaps to think about whether it's actually human potential that you are investing in because I look around you and I see some awesome people inside and outside. Haven't met Rochelle yet but can't wait to. And what's your thoughts on that? i never thought of that before but when you say that when you said that the first

thoughts i had was um um i've always managed to build good teams and you could be right i never actually introspected long enough to get down the path of human potential being what i extract out of people but i think my biggest joys are like stuff that i remember the most uh um i got i got a message on linkedin from a girl that used to work at the restaurant and she said to me um thank you for believing me before i believed in myself um so and i built such a good team there that when the restaurant shut so we did saturday service on saturday night on sunday the locks were changed and on monday the 10 of us um or they arranged for the meeting but the 10 of us got together the fish and chip

shop um and they were genuinely thinking of taking a five thousand dollar personal loan per person to start the restaurant again amazing and i was just going sitting there going if i might have failed big time but i think i've managed to build this team and again amplified team is it's just a new level up on that um i feel like um every time i think i've hit some sort of a um a wall it's more a perceived wall of what people have told me that their problems are with building teams are then actually our problems yes um and like when i when i look around the I think our biggest asset by a long shot

it's not the process it's not the seven step it's not the book it's not the website it's not me it's our team our team is phenomenal

so probably yeah probably you're probably right because Rochelle again

when she first when we first started dating I asked her what her hobby was she said reading nursing textbooks that's how much

she was forced to think that the only thing she's supposed to do is fucking do nursing. You know, you're conditioned to kind of go, that's just your part, don't think anything other than that. Right.

And we found out that she's a baker at heart. She doesn't even have to measure to bake. She can look and kind of, you know, baking is all about measurement. She doesn't have to measure. She doesn't measure shit. Wow, that's a skill. yeah she just it's crazy yeah um she also cares about the environment a lot like she actually

petitioned garden city which is a westfield here um to have the recycled and the and the um you know normal bins and like again i it's she's like i would have never done that if you didn't allow me to do that so maybe maybe it's human potential that's interesting i never thought thought of that the uh if i look at your uh to most people you will be considered an overnight success there's very few people that uh you come across that have achieved what you have uh so quickly and you obviously have a skill at at drawing talent around you and giving them the the inspiration and the belief to believe in you what you're doing and how they can make that happen and and i think something that's that's uh quite rare in your instance also is the ability

to have a global team so to create a culture that's in all corners of the world and have a wife who lives in and works in india while you live and eat in australia very few people survive that can you can you talk to us about what you think it is that that allows you to keep that together and keep everyone heading in the same direction um i care about them that's that's i that's the only thing i could put it down to i care about them and i care about us as a team more than i care about anything else yeah i care about us functioning and moving in the same direction um when we got the offer to buy amplify in november and i put it to the management team that this is the offer that we got,

the best compliment I got was whatever you decide, we'll follow. We'll come wherever you think we should go. You make the decision. So in our parents' time, so my parents' time, it's like they cared about security and money more than they cared about anything else.

Security and money was so important to them. Our generation cares about freedom and time yes more than they care about anything else yes so everyone keeps complaining about millennials and how they don't have certain characteristics that they want in an employee but they're not seeing what millennials bring to the table yes they're only complaining about what they don't bring to the table yes so we've managed to harness the power of millennials to create a culture where freedom is our number one value. Yes.

And every single one of us value freedom very highly on our list of values. So we just find better and better ways to make sure that happens. So how do you honor everyone's definition of freedom is different and you've got a diverse team. how do you honor everyone's need and type of freedom in the context of what you're doing at Amplify? You ask them. Okay.

You just ask them. We have a standard process that everyone goes to three interviews before with three different team members at three different times before they get an Amplify agency email address. By that time, values of definitions of freedom and all that kind of stuff are already clarified, they either opt out or the team opts them out because those values don't align

or those definitions don't align or any of that stuff. But once they're on board, once they're on board, then we are one irrespective of who is the broken link or the one that's sticking out like a sore thumb we we we're one at that stage until we're not right so you won't you won't hear me complain about a team member yeah ever yeah because we're one if i complain about a team member it's i'm complaining about myself yes yeah um and it's

my responsibility because i've put them there yes it's not like it's there's no scenario where it's not my responsibility yeah okay so let's dig dig into freedom a little bit in the context of what it means to you and i'd uh let's jump 10 years forward uh what's what's your perfect lifestyle look like then in the context of freedom describe it to me um i don't think i've ever thought of it that way but i i feel like it's the ability to make or have the options of doing whatever i feel like doing at the time yeah um so the really cool thing right now is like see pat as an example stephanie as an example like she's stephanie's come here from the states yeah and and she can go anywhere and work right now and still work at amplify pat the same pat's looking to come here

for three months every year and then we she comes here every year at the end and we plan the next year going forward and she's happy doing that like she has to pay rent doesn't matter where she lives right it's just about that extra flight ticket um so now we're kind of looking where stephanie's here pat's here ryan's here uh elizabeth's in in perth lillian has just joined we just need to get will here for we are podcast and then we can plan 2018 together yes and our core team is already here yeah um but that freedom i suppose they need to be able to know that they don't have to think can i do this is this a is this like is this a deal breaker if i have to you know if i want to go for two weeks to to asia or to want to asia or whatever it doesn't matter

It doesn't matter what they want to do. They should be able to go wherever and still continue working as normal. Yeah, okay. So I feel that's the same for me. Yeah, okay. So if you picture your ideal lifestyle in your head, is it any different to what you're living now? Yeah, Rochelle is around, I think, in my ideal lifestyle.

She's around more. I think I'm climbing a little bit more. Yes. So I don't necessarily see myself as, I don't think I'm working at any stage. I don't feel like what I'm doing right now is work at all. I feel like I'm given this amazing opportunity to be able to express myself every single day. That's all. That's all.

I just express myself every single day. And I'm getting more comfortable in my own skin. And every day I express myself, which I was never able to do before. No, okay. Yeah. Yeah, awesome. Okay. So the who knows what tomorrow holds,

but you see is Amplified being the vehicle that's ultimately going to enable you to live exactly the way you want? Maybe not. I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe not. I genuinely don't know. Yeah.

I feel that Amplify is this beautiful machine that if we put a certain type of client in on one end, they become a profitable, scalable, marketable business at the other end. More and more we're seeing that. Just the way it is structured, we know that. With my core team set up the way they are set up, I feel like they're set up to run Amplify without me.

yeah and then my job just becomes pretty much doing whatever i want to do yeah in terms of raising the brand and raising my brand and and speaking and yeah and um yeah you know that's that's really where we're at at this stage because i look around and i see some of my friends and i see that the biggest struggles are that they're the creative person and they're the operations person and then they're the accounting person and then they all they have to do all this stuff and they get caught between these two different brains and i just look around and i kind of go well how can i not let that happen in amplify how are you going to let that not happen in there before we we we we learn every step of the way so amplify is built on the three biggest lessons i learned

from the restaurant okay the first lesson was that the biggest bill that we had to pay was staff wages right so we don't have any employees um everyone's everyone's building their entrepreneur base right yeah uh the second biggest um problem we had at the restaurant was the location once the location was there that that was it that was it was stuck we were just stuck there yes we could not even pivot so no one there's no location yeah at amplifier and the third one was every time we sold a meal to someone we had to market to them again to sell to them again yeah and we don't have that anymore yeah so as as much as people think that we are on the edge of stuff and we are pushing boundaries we have more backup plans that they then and safety nets than than anyone knows

from within the business yeah brilliant yeah brilliant excellent so so projecting forward then you've invested strongly in conversations as a means to perhaps perhaps enhance human potential which enables you to do more of what you want to do do you see yourself investing in anything differently moving forward ron's like yeah we see ourselves investing in businesses we see ourselves buying businesses okay um we see ourselves um yeah listing amplify in in a few years okay but as a group of companies yeah um it only makes sense because we're on this wave of disruption and if all our clients are disruptors as well then we just enable the wave right yes uh again we don't we genuinely don't know what it looks

like in hindsight everything in the past and everyone says success and um it doesn't matter if it was an overnight success or it took 10 years to make it all looks they all look like great decisions yes in hindsight yeah but at the time and even now i'm making shit up all the time like i'm seriously like you know i'm not like i'm smarter with all the experiences that have already happened yeah but i'm dealing with stuff that have never happened before yes and i'm in situations that i've never been in before so there's no way for me to make educated guesses or educated decisions or we're just kind of going let's do this and see whether this works yeah so you've clearly got a lot of courage because there's the if you look at both in the spectrum

there's those who build it and then they will come and then there's those that say let's get them there and then build it you're obviously deferring towards that let's let's get them there and then build it so what what gives you that courage to be able to i think i think the whole statement of building it and they will come as a stupid fucking statement i think whoever coined that statement should be kicked in the shin like really hard like seriously like that's such a dumbass statement like i i don't even i have never seen a situation where someone just built it and fucking people have just flocked to it like it there's there's all this stuff that happens like even the i have a dream speech has was given like 93 times before it actually became

a thing yeah like you know there's no build it and they will come you have to kind of look and see what the market wants and what the market dictates and and it's extremely naive to kind of go into and i did that i mean i've done that i did that with a restaurant okay that i went into it thinking oh the rest the world's gonna love this portuguese indian concept because it's great it sounds very romantic in my head and let's just go spend shit loads of money on it um i don't think that's how business works i don't think that's how entrepreneurship works because you're genuinely not solving a meaningful problem because you haven't gone to the market to find out whether that's their problem or not yes good call good call and and you're sort of leading the wave at

the moment in the the podcast revolution here in australia and there's a there's a question i've obviously been busting to ask you right through this and that is that why is podcast quote unquote so hot at the moment wow um i don't think i've ever been asked that question i've asked that question so many times um a few reasons first of all we've been through the the wave of text being the thing right and everyone thought that every blogger was sitting in their mom's basement trying to make money uh but it's not not the case anymore every single business big corporate to small business are investing in blogging and text um as much as much as they ever have then that wave um while it was coming down the video wave started and youtube became a thing and youtube

now every minute there's about two million minutes of video being uploaded to youtube every minute wow seriously yeah so that's that that waves on its peak okay the next step is audio yeah because it's the only form of content that you can consume uh while you're doing other things yeah and considering that time and freedom are now our highest values as a population yes uh and considering that the the the entity to make that happen is already in our pockets and it's the first and last screen we see every single day you put that all together and you see alexa voice and google voice and all those things coming up and you see apple carplay you see google carplay you see um how uh internet is going to be in cars standard in 2020

that's the next wave we know it's the next wave yeah it's not even we we are innovating on our own work yes it's so new yeah that we are innovating on our own work exciting uh it's it's it's extremely exciting yeah yeah and the if we push the curve in terms of where the the audio revolution is going to go beyond the the standard podcast fear what else is coming that you can see that's that's going to ignite opportunity so they're all they're investing heavily and we're not very far from an audio search engine and you know like right now you can

ask Siri a whole bunch of stuff but they're working on the algorithm of being able to go into a piece of mp3 file and search for that phrase and with computing getting so quick and that's not far away

so if you can actually go into like just think about the possibility right now you want information you ask Siri something you know you see him i tell you uh or you have to read it or you have to watch it or something like that you think about the evolution of that and you ask for something it searches for it and gives you the raw audio of what answer you're looking for based on already content that's already been created okay and then the next level there is like we already we already interact with with images

like now we go to an event and we take a selfie or we take an image of our food or all that kind of stuff and we're interacting with images that there's not going to be far away where we can interact with audio. So how do you,

there's just this wall of noise that we're surrounded in from visual, audio, you name it, everywhere. How have you managed to cut through that, Rosalie? i i think that my i so before the human potential stuff came up uh i thought my biggest strength was bringing two different opposing camps together okay um i i can trace back through when i was a kid that i've done that like with the you know geek in sports and sports in geek and um and then

i did um the indian portuguese restaurant my thesis was on joining rigid quality processes with agile quality processes. Yeah, okay. So I've always brought these two camps that hated each other together. And now it almost feels the same in podcasting

because the creative people that create stuff don't care about the commercial. Like Ryan and me went for a conference to Sydney and it was all the creative people. It was called Audiocraft. All the creative people.

Okay. And the opening keynote speaker said on stage in her opening keynote that she didn't have money and she didn't know how to sustain the podcast wow and what came out the most out of the whole thing was they didn't value themselves enough to to charge money and there was this big conflict between being creative and having passion and charging for that and then there's the other side

uh who only think of the commercial right like i'm a financial advisor let me start a financial advising podcast you know like and and i don't i don't really care about whether i want it to work because i want my business to work it's not like how much value can i create yeah and the commercial and the creative should fucking have a baby yes and i think that's the baptism and and i think yeah and i think that's where where amplify um strives and and and are able to create this cut through is because we bring the creative and the commercial together in a way that um that is extremely beneficial to the business fantastic so if you had a an opportunity now with with the enormous journey that you've already been on

and you could talk to the 16 17 year old bronsley that was just leaving school what would you be telling him to invest in that you didn't at that time belief in himself right um i see i don't i don't have any regrets in life ever like i've never had even when i was a kid so it's not like a new thing no um but if you're going to try and shortcut the journey perhaps i don't i wouldn't want to shortcut the journey because i've had a i've had an amazing amazing amazing life yeah i wouldn't want to change any any single thing about it yeah um i it's only last couple like maybe 18 months or so that i've started to believe in myself okay uh and being comfortable in my own skin and being able to say things that just come

to my mind yeah um because i was always sort of i would always say things and everyone would look at me weird because no one had ever thought of that yeah and i thought that was just me being weird right me being you know this this weird character yeah um but who knew that was my strength like well and that's i think that's the the biggest thing you've got to invest in whatever it is is your creative thinking that that is the piece that you it's an absolute rarity it's it's the reason why we're doing business with you no question about that uh okay so uh what's your definition of success then well how would you define success for you the freedom to do whatever you want to do at any time at any stage at any at any level and

not necessarily question you know um the resources that go into doing whatever it is that you want to do is there a time frame to success do you think it takes a certain amount of time no i don't think there's a destination no i don't think there's a destination ever okay i think we're on this journey as entrepreneurs that it's about enjoying the dance so as a as a dance like if you think about a dance alan watts actually put this like in an amazing uh metaphor is like if there's a there's a like if you think of a dance there's no destination because a dance would end immediately if your job was to get to the middle of the of the dance floor then you can do that immediately sure but it's about enjoying the dance sure while it's happening yeah that is key and i think

entrepreneurship is the same yeah because every time you think that you know what success looks like yeah and you and you're in the pursuit of that success yeah you learn so much more about yourself and so much more about what you don't know yes that you redefine success so every time success is going to keep changing the goalposts are never going to be the same and i think there's no there's no destination yeah okay the analogy i often often use when talking about sustainable success and whatever whatever success is to you because there is no right or wrong in this i often talk about the fact that you you sow a seed today you cultivate weed water it you see it through the seasons and the it's the power of time that then generates a fully grown tree with

with bountiful fruit that then will last forever so how does that which is different from the dance routine uh i think the key in that metaphor is is figuring out uh what trees you love to plant yes um and and then going all in on that what are yours um i feel a challenge in the status quo and connecting connecting people yeah in a way that they think for themselves about whatever's taken for granted. I feel like that, I do that more than I, all right through my life,

I think I do that more than I do anything else. Like I kind of expose, because I've already thought about it, I've exposed people to something that they kind of went, wait, I've always thought this was just the way it is. and it's almost always not. Like as an example,

we had dinner the other day, Stephanie and me in Sydney and I said to her, Amplify technically doesn't exist. We've just signed a bunch of documents and now we trade as Amplify but what the hell is Amplify? It's just something we created.

How much of those constructs have we created that we don't even know we've created and we've just taken for granted? so I think that's my strength I feel like I question stuff so much that I don't think there's one path

so if someone says like Rochelle also will not say I know Ronsley I know what he's going to do next because I also don't know what I'm going to do next so there's no way

for someone else to know what I'm going to do next so it's hard like I think I think it's about this learning and being in the pursuit of knowing how much you don't know.

Yes. I think that's a cool spot to be in. Yeah, it's a very cool spot to be in. And being comfortable being uncomfortable, I'm guessing, is part of that. I don't think it's about... I think uncomfortable is uncomfortable. And I think it should be acknowledged

for it being uncomfortable. And I think it doesn't stop. I'm scared at least, you know, at least nine at least nine to ten times a month if not longer and there are at least two days a month that i just feel like not getting out of bed because of whatever i have to deal with is so big and so huge and i was like i i genuinely just feel like just postponing it so how do you overcome that because everyone's faced with those challenges and they're as big or as small as how they perceive them how have you jumped those hurdles uh i have i have a whole team that looks

up to me to make the right decision we started off with that conversation about making the right decision yeah i tried every step of the way to make the right decision yeah um and a lot of the times the right decision is you know just getting out of bed and uh doing whatever the first thing is that you need to do to and and and and i'm very conscious that there are people looking up to me or looking down to me or looking at me for example so i think of those things yeah that's an awesome closing of the loop uh just one last question what question would you like me to ask you that i haven't i don't know i haven't i i didn't think i didn't come in with an agenda to think of what you were

asked me so is there anything that you'd like me to ask ask you that i that i didn't raise um i think i invest in in my day every every morning and i feel like many people don't know that right that i invest to wake up every morning at 4 30 um and invest however difficult that is to do for that to happen. I mean, there are days when I'm sick or there are days that I don't feel like it, but nine times out of ten, I will wake up at 4.30 every morning.

I will meditate. I will have a shower. And I will consume something that betters me or improves me as a person. So I think that investment is not like a one-time thing. I think it's a continual journey. habits yeah i invest in a lot of my habits yeah yeah awesome look uh been absolutely sensational talking to you ronsley i can't wait to have you back again yeah this is going to be a sensational

journey and you've opened that opportunity to me and got me motivated and excited about the power of podcasts so um i see you as a mentor i see you as someone who will continue to guide me and a lot of people that I'm bringing to the joy of this medium of learning and improving themselves so thank you for being here just let people know where they can

find you and where they can learn more about Amplify and Ronsley Beds Thanks Bushy, I think we've invested in where you're going as well and I think that's a cool journey and I'm excited to see where that goes and I think you guys are doing some amazing things and I feel there's an investment both ways

mustamplify.com is where you'll find the hub for everything that we do but yeah, Ronsley Ronsley at gmail.com is my email address so send me an email. Thank you for being

invested, Ronsley Vaz. Cheers buddy Well Freedom Fighters how good was that? To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au. That's H-E-L-L-O at khgroup.com.au. Or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash Get Invested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the Get Invested podcast. So thanks for listening. And as always, dream as if you live forever

and live as if you die tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you.