with greg layton

The Inner Chief is for leaders, professionals and small business owners who want to accelerate their career and growth. Our guest chiefs and gurus share powerful stories and strategies so you can have more purpose, influence and impact in your career.

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In today’s episode we meet Ronsley Vaz.

Ronsley is a speaker, author and marketer. He is the author of the book ‘AMPLIFY – How to raise your voice, boost your brand and grow your business'. His podcast, ‘Bond Appetit’, is Australia’s #1 food podcast on iTunes and receives between eight and twelve thousand listeners a day. Ronsley is also the founder of content marketing agency Amplify, which has grown from zero to twelve staff in just ten months.

Ronsley sits on the board for freetoshine.org, an organisation that prevents sex trafficking. He has an MBA in Psychology and Leadership and a Master's in Software Engineering as well as a Diploma in Financial Services. Ronsley’s journey has seen him specialise in a variety of different industries. Before killing it as an entrepreneur, he worked as a DJ, software engineer, financial adviser, restaurateur and chef.

His newest venture, Amplify, is all about converting audio into a content-marketing echo chamber. He and his team help clients create content and turn it into genuine assets that allow their businesses to grow.

We cover:

  1. The labels we carry and boxes we put ourselves in that stop us growing
  2. How to find your inner voice and execute
  3. The future of the audio world
  4. Knowing your impact on your team maintain empathy
  5. Dropping entitlement syndrome

See more at  www.chiefmaker.com.au/80

Connect with Ronsley

Key Points and Quotes from Ronsley Vaz

  • You can always connect the dots looking backwards, was I think was somebody, Steve Jobs or someone said that. It always looks like a great plan when you look backwards. Usually when you're doing it, you're putting one foot in front of the other. I was not born an entrepreneur. I just thought I was a nine to fiver, and I was technically inclined and not creative. So, those were the narratives that were given to me growing up, “You have the aptitude for engineering, you have to do engineering, you're technically inclined, you're not creative.” I've created more stuff than I've fixed I suppose. So, from a technical standpoint that, that's extremely weird when I think that half my life I didn't think I was creative.
  • But other than that, all of us belong in boxes. I believe that's probably one of the biggest things that limits what each one of us can achieve, is because somehow, either through circumstance or in our own heads, we've put ourselves in a certain box, and we're just not willing to explore anything past that box because we're scared that stuff will happen that we have no control over, when in reality we have no control over anything.
  • sometimes we're not willing to see a different perspective or the other side of a certain story, because we're so holding onto ours and we want ours to be true so much, that we get defensive about a different viewpoint, and we react to it and just slam it down and say, “That's just not me, it's not right.” In that conversation, rather than going, “Well, what is the truth to that? Should I consider it a in a different way? Is it a perspective that I've received for a certain reason?” An easy way to look at it. I suppose religion and politics are the ones that people don't like to talk about the most, that's why I would like to talk about it.
  • With my top leadership team, I'm very transparent and open. If I'm having a bad day or a bad period, I'm pretty open about it and I'll say, “I'm seeing everything from a weird lens, guys, can you please be aware that's what's happening,” so that we don't make decisions based on my negative lens of the world, because that does happen.
  • Then, following that in 2016, we started the first audio marketing agency in the world, called it Amplify. Because, someone asked me for what the name was, I literally googled powerful verbs, and I didn't even get to B. I like, “Amplify. That sounds fabulous, let's just go with that.” That's how we made the business.
  • As you know, over the last three or four weeks, I've been to the states and I hung out with Gary and the team at VaynerMedia on a couple of those days when I was in New York. Yeah. Gary Vaynerchuk. A lot of Gary's stuff influenced me quite a lot. So, in the first meeting, on the first day when I was going through, I was so nervous that I did not speak for 40 minutes. I just let them do all the talking, and when I did speak, I spoke for about, I don't know, two or three minutes, and then Gary stopped me and said, “Hey Ronsley, I have this feeling that you think that the market owes you something because you were the first to market. The market doesn't owe you anything. You just have to be better than what you did before.”
  • He was right. I never admitted it to anyone, but we were the first to everything. So, at the back of my mind I had this sense of entitlement, almost, that the market needed to give me something in return. Here's what I think the answer to your question is, get rid of the sense of entitlement because it's very easy to fall in that trap, not even know you're there and justify your bullshit. So, I think that that's step number one, in all honesty.
  • Just because you've been working on a project and you decide that you deserve to get a raise, does not mean that everything will conspire to give that to you. Especially, sometimes you start having a sense of entitlement. I think the universe finds very interesting ways to make you humble again. Sometimes we don't like it and we go on a rampage. But, the quicker we accept it, I think the quicker everyone can just move along.
  • The first step to executing on it is to let people know that this is what you stand for. This is what you believe in. If it's something you genuinely believe in as well, you don't have a problem with someone who gives you a better way to look at it. So, having a voice and making sure that this is what you stand for, is the beginning to doing great work, in my opinion.
  • That you can think for yourself. Critical thinking is by far the most important skill that is taken for granted and not taught to us. Because, we are actually taught to think in boxes. We're taught to think in certain ways and not explore our imagination, not explore what's possible. Here's the kicker Greg, look around you every single thing around you. From the words I was speaking to the building I'm sitting in, everything has been made up by us. It's all made up. Someone thought of one day and it's now a thing, now we have a definition for the word perfect. We have a definition for the word prolific. That's all made up. So, don't underestimate the power of you sitting by yourself and having thoughts that allow you to challenge some of your preconceived notions.

Stay epic
Greg Layton