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PLAY A GAME! BIGGER ROWDY TALKS INTERVIEW SERIES

Rowdy Talks Series_2

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PL AY A

GAME!BIGGER

ROWDYTALKS

INTERVIEWSERIES

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© Rowdy McLean 2011 This Book Is Copyright.

All Rights Reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the copyright act, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of Rowdy McLean.

e: [email protected] p: 1800 438 732 w: www.playabiggergame.com.au

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWERRon McLean has been known as ‘Rowdy’ most of his life because he is easy going, friendly, light hearted, pragmatic, down to earth and real. Rowdy is an expert on productivity, personal growth and achievement. He is the master of making things happen and getting things done and has achieved some remarkable things.

Ultimately we all want more, more money, more time, more fun, more love, more customers. Rowdy has spent the last decade studying the key drivers of success and achievement. He has developed a process to help individuals, teams and organisations unlock potential and play a much bigger game than they ever thought possible.

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ABOUT THE SERIESThe Rowdy Talks series is unique and motivating series. Professional speaker and consultant Rowdy Mclean takes his hand held camera or iPhone4 every where he goes and on meeting with some of Australia’s most renowned experts and specialists he springs them with a quick interview.

Rowdy endeavours and digs into how these successful players are to Play A Bigger Game in both business and in life. Rowdy’s open interview style and casual approach leaves these experts revealing more than they problem wanted to.

Read, learn and be inspired!

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Nils vesk

Nils Vesk is an innovation expert. For the last 18 years Nils has been applying the process of design thinking to the business of generating and realising ideas. His clients include the worlds fastest growing companies who use Nils as a virtual think tank and change catalyst for accelerating business growth through innovation.

Nils takes ideas out of their hiding places - be it in bottom draws or the dark reaches of your employees’ minds; identifying the ideas with the most potential he gives them the right foundations, investment, development and support to succeed.

During their interview Nils Vesk talks to Rowdy about innovation, and why we need to interrupt our habits and routine in order to Play A Bigger Game. In this interview Nils draws on his expertise and applies the concept to how you can achieve more, be more, do more and have more.

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Stuart Cook

Stuart Cook is the CEO of Australia’s fastest growing franchise (BRW) as well as one of the youngest franchise CEO. After being appointed the CEO of Zambrero fresh Mexican grill, just before his 24th birthday he has lead the company to a growth of 600% in the last 18 months now employing more than 170 people across the group. Stuart has set his sights to take Zambrero to 100 stores by 2014.

In 2011, Zambrero was listed as the fastest growing franchise of the year in BRW. In 2010 Zambrero was the Social Responsible franchisor of the year, Mybusiness Magazine’s Best Retailer and the ACT’s Emerging Entrepreneurial Company of the Year.

During this interview Stuart Cook tells the story of how he came to be one of Australia’s youngest CEO of Australia’s fastest growing franchise. Stuart Cook explains to Rowdy how and why it is passion that got him to where he is today, Stuart goes on to explain how by applying this mind-set he has been able to Play A Bigger Game!

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Alison Hill

Alison’s extraordinary listening skills literally change people’s lives. A Psychologist with a wealth of experience as a trainer, coach and mentor Alison has a passion to support people to interact with principle, influence with purpose and inspire with passion. Alison’s ever present compassion, empathy and insight ensures that she works closely with individuals and organisations to achieve sustainable results.

Alison has particular expertise in supporting, training and working HR professionals to build, polish and improve their ‘human skills’. It is Alison’s personal quest to see workplaces progress from reactivity to proactivity in how they inspire those who work for them. Alison Hill is the managing director of consultant and training firm Prag-matic Thinking.

In her explosive interview Alison Hill reveals to Rowdy why it is important to not get caught up in your own head. Drawing on her own experience of training to run a marathon Alison explains how upping the thinking, changing you thinking and in-creasing the possibility can help you Play a Bigger Game!

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Hugh Gyton

Hugh has been involved in conversations that matter for over 25 years in diverse cultural backgrounds around the globe for products and services that have had a price range from $2,000 to over $30million. He is the co-author of the book ‘The Art of Conversation’.

Hugh’s professional conversations started in London in the computer software in-dustry. During more than a decade with his first company, he rose to senior levels, including General Manager, Comshare Australia. On being headhunted into Hong Kong he broadened his understanding of the importance of relationship over ‘sales technique’ honing a more engaged, collaborative approach to leverage the cultural differences now faced.

During his interview with Rowdy, Hugh talks about his move from the UK to Aus-tralia and how you have to learn that things are sometimes done differently in order to Play A Bigger Game! In his real life examples Hugh touches on why it is good to take yourself out of the comfort zone and why goal setting doesn’t always work.

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Video TranscriptionRowdy talks to...Nils Vesk

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Rowdy: Good morning Nils, how are you today?

Nils: Pretty good Rowdy and hi to everyone at home or in the office, wherever you might be.

Rowdy: So this morning I’m just spending some time with Nils Vesk, an innovation expert who’s worked with companies right across the globe and individuals and teams, talking about innovation and how to introduce innovation into their personal lives or into their workspace.

And so this series is all about playing a bigger game. So giving people ideas about how they can play a bigger game in their personal lives.

So, Nils from an innovation point of view, have you got some tips and ideas about how people can use innovation to play a bigger game?

Nils: Sure Rowdy. I wanted to share, I guess a thought that relates not just innovation, but it’s gener-ally around playing a bigger game. If you think of the word innovation, itself means that there’s got to be change. So without change you can’t have innovation. But the interesting thing about the human mind is the mind above all else seeks and craves order. It loves habits, it loves ritu-als and to interrupt that habit, to mix it up and do something different actually aggravates and agitates the mind. So, we do as much as we can to avoid change and therefore because we’re trying to avoid change, it avoids perhaps the opportunities that come down with innovations and also playing a bigger game.

So a good way to think about it is systematically that we have 60 000 thoughts a day and of those 60 000 thoughts a day, about 90 percent of them are the same. Which is pretty spooky if we go into, say for example your mind Rowdy, you’re always obsessed about one thing but we won’t go into that right now, but that’s the thing. So we get stuck into this habit and into this routine and if we want to play a bigger game, whether it is by coming up with a new innovation in sales and service, a new innovation in a product, a new innovation in a process, it’s just simply not going to happen unless we interrupt that habit.

And a way of thinking about it, if you think back personally in your own life, the biggest growths that you would have made personally or professionally, would have happened after a period of some sort of chaos. Now that chaos might have been caused by a relationship issue, it might have been caused the fact that you had to learn something new, you had to go beyond your com-fort zone. And if you can imagine this chaos has actually forced you to grow and develop either again or professionally or personally. And then once you’ve done that, then your mind sort of goes into a state of order. You get used to it, you get complacent and then again maybe some-thing forces you to go into that chaos to get better and to learn and to go higher.

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So if you can understand that principle that chaos actually works for you and you can keep your intention of, “I want to innovate to play a bigger game.” Note that there’s going to be some chaos then it will take you up to that higher level of higher, brighter ideas and better results.

Rowdy: Yes so that’s fairly complex but also fairly simple Nils. So you’re talking about people get caught in this comfort zone, and so it’s like a bit of a plateau, but to get out of that you need to shake yourself up a little bit in some way, shape or form. So, create that chaos or look for the chaos that might give you the opportunity to change and get yourself to another level where you created another comfort zone and so you step up, play a bigger game by doing that.

Nils: Yes and just to reiterate why this thing happens is that the mind or the brain is a patterning ma-chine, it’s a whiz. Remember the game ‘join the dots’? Well the brain can do that amazingly well. So the thing is that if you say, “We have to start here and I want to end up there,” the brain will somehow force the connection.

So an innovation more often then not is starting to introduce a connection that hasn’t been done before but because of those habits and because of those rituals, rather than starting somewhere new, we start where we always start. So even though we’ve got the intention of “I want to gen-erate an innovation and play a higher game,” it’s not going to happen because we’re coming up with the same combinations. So whether it’s around I want to look at an innovation of lifting maybe my personal income, or planning an innovation around ways that I can create some new goals or a new business product or a new service or something. It’s generally not going to be in-novative unless you’re forcing yourself to start somewhere new by interrupting that pattern or that habit.

Rowdy: It’s been awesome Nils, great ideas about how people can play a bigger game. Thank you for spending five minutes with Rowdy talking about how to play a bigger game.

Nils: No worries. Thanks for having me, good luck with it guys.

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Video TranscriptionRowdy talks to...Stuart Cook

Rowdy: I’ve just got in my office today a fabulous visitor Stuart Cook, the CEO of Zambrero’s a Mexican fast food franchise, has grown 700 percent in the last 12 months. How are you Stuart?

Stuart: Yeah really good thanks Rowdy.

Rowdy: Mate, welcome to ‘Play A Bigger Game!’

Stuart: Thank you for having me.

Rowdy: Mate one of the things we like to do, is we like to talk to people about how do they go about playing a bigger game. And I’ve got a whole heap of little questions I’d like to ask you about how you’re playing a bigger game. But mate, how old are you at the moment?

Stuart: I’m 25.

Rowdy: 25 and you’ve achieved some remarkable things. Tell us a little bit about the Zambrero’s growth thing.

Stuart: So Zambrero’s the chain over the last 12 months has grown from a relatively small chain of two to three stores, and today we actually opened our 11th store. And currently we’ve got stores rolling out every two weeks with the intention of being to a 30 million dollar revenue company by the end of the year.

Rowdy: Mate that is absolutely awesome. And one of the things I love about the story of your business – and I think we’re going to have to do more than one interview to hear about all these stories – is that every time somebody buys something in your store, something remarkable happens. Tell us about that.

Stuart: So one of the big things about Zambrero and the background of Zambrero’s is that it has a huge philanthropic aspect to it. And one of the things about Zambrero’s is that every time we put a plate of food in front of you, the customer; we actually donate a plate of food to someone in the developing world. And we call this our ‘plate4plate’ initiative. So the whole intention of this is to do great, to do good deeds and also to make all of our customers feel better about themselves after leaving our stores as well.

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Rowdy: Mate that is absolutely fantastic. It’s a great story and we’d probably like to delve into it a lot further but at ‘Play A Bigger Game!’ we like to keep things short and fast, so we’ll come back and interview you again later on to get all the detail. But for the people watching this video, if you were to give them one tip about playing a bigger game, achieving their goals or their dreams or getting results, what would it be?

Stuart:I think the big thing is being passionate about it. I think the reason for our success is we’ve been so passionate about our vision and where we want to be that we do everything possible, we are creative about the way that we work, we work ridiculous hours and through that hard work and that passion we bring a lot of people around us who are supporting us and helping us build the company that we want and to reach our dreams. And I think by having that passion, people see it in your eyes and they’re willing to jump on board and really help you to achieve those dreams that you set out to achieve.

Rowdy: Yes so don’t be afraid to tell people about what it is you want to do and what you want to achieve, what’s on the horizon and in such a way that they’re engaged with it and are happy to participate themselves. Is that it?

Stuart: Yes definitely. I mean, a lot of people dream about what they want to be when they grow up. I mean, you start of when you’re a child and you dream that you want to be an astronaut, okay, and then seven years later then you might decide “Well that’s quite tough to do, oh I might settle for something else.” And you might keep settling and settling and you forget what you actually dreamed that you once wanted to be.

And I think our dream personally for Zambrero is to actually build 100 stores by July 2014 and not only that, along with that by the time we get to that goal, we’ll be feeding approximately five million children a year. And that just sends tingles up my spine and it gets us really excited and when we talk about that, about our dreams and that we’re actually pursuing them, people jump on board because they might not feel confident or courageous enough to go after their own dreams. But if they see that they can actually help us to achieve ours, then they start living vicari-ously through us and helping us to achieve our dreams. So that’s one thing that’s probably been the biggest strength for us and our brand and our charity side of things is through the passion for our dreams that we set out to achieve.

Rowdy: Awesome mate, what a perfect message for ‘Play A Bigger Game!’ so I love the description of playing a bigger game 100 stores by 2014. But the big game on the back of that is feeding five million people through the charity that’s attached to that, that’s just amazing.

Stuart: It is good and I mean we’re lucky that we’ve been brought up in a country and a community that allows us to do whatever is possible and not everyone has that. So that’s something that, you know, we are very quite proud of and we hope that we can inspire other people to come on board and help us or actually do their own part, whatever industry or business that they’re in as well.

Rowdy: Mate, you’ve inspired me and I’m sure you’ve inspired all the people watching this video. The two tips I think that we can all take away from what you’ve just talked about is, don’t be afraid to

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share with people the bigger game that you’re going to play. And the second one is, don’t settle for second best, don’t settle for just so-so.

Awesome mate.

Stuart: Thank you for having me and I look forward to talking again soon.

Rowdy: Thanks Stuart it’s been awesome talking to you about playing a bigger game, we look forward to talking to you again real soon.

Thanks mate.

Stuart:Cheers, bye.

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Video TranscriptionRowdy talks to...Alison Hill

Rowdy:I’m just here this afternoon with Alison Hill from pragmatic thinking, how are you Alison?

Alison: Really well Rowdy, how are you going?

Rowdy: I’m great, I’m great, so Alison is a phycologist and an author and she specialises in getting peo-ple to dig a bit deeper whether it be on a personal level or even in business. Alison I’ve wanted to take a few minutes today to talk to you about, what’s your thoughts on how people can play a bigger game?

Alison: I guess (and I love your thing around play a bigger game Rowdy) the thing that really comes to mind for me is actually how that we are what we think and what I mean by that is that we can play a bigger game by the thoughts in our heads by actually upping the ante in terms of what we think about ourselves, about what we think about that’s possible, about what we think other people can help us out with and about what is available. For me that really hit home recently I’m actually training to run my first ever marathon which is both scary and exciting at the same time.

Rowdy: Awesome!

Alison: And I did the whole head thing around how am I ever going to run 42 kilometres, what a ridicu-lous thing to try and do, I’m probably going to die at 30 kilometres and hate the whole experi-ence. And I happened to read a post by someone saying that they were never been a runner, just got up from the couch and were going to run their first half marathon in 40 weeks time and I just thought pull your finger out, you could run a marathon tomorrow if you had to, if there was a big enough reason to. Since then for the last two weeks I’ve been loving the training, loving the ex-perience. So I can’t wait and I know that if I needed to run a marathon tomorrow I could and the only thing that changed was the way I thought about it. And so for me to be able to play a bigger game to actually know that I can get from the start line to the finish line its all about yeah I am what I think and upping the thinking, changing my thinking, increasing the possibility around that has made all the difference.

Rowdy: So that’s amazing, isn’t it? Sometimes we teach what we most need to learn. So you’re really good at teaching people how to think deeper and really get in touch with the critical things.

Alison: Yeah

Rowdy: And yet you needed to do that for yourself in relation to the marathon, great story. What’s some

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tips you can give people about how they can prepare mentally for something and overcome those mental challenges that stopped them from playing a bigger game?

Alison: I think one of the biggest barriers that I find is that people get caught up in their own heads, and so the biggest way to think bigger to think about a bigger game is to think outside of your head, to actually to talk to someone to share what’s going on with you, to share where your at, to be okay to be vulnerable enough to kind of go actually I’m not sure or I’m a bit worried or I’m actu-ally a bit ashamed that I think about this because it’s the easiest way to stop all that sort of stuff going around and around in your head and as soon as you do possibilities just become, just open up for you. So my number one tip would be to find a trusted friend, a mentor, a college someone that you trust and feel comfortable to do that with to kind of share where you’re at. And they will come at you from their perspective and you won’t even realise or have thought about that. So my number tip is to get talking.

Rowdy: Yeah so get talking, get it out of your head, get it into another space, stretch it bounce it around and see what comes from that.

Alison: Absolutely! You might not agree with what someone else says but at least you will have a really good, hard reason why, it will strap you even stronger to what you believe in or you might think of something totally different.

Rowdy: so another opinion allows you to get some perspective anyway and not just listen to those little voices in your own head

Alison: Yeah absolutely. Yeah I think we are getting trapped and caught up in that too much, and that’s where we place more.

Rowdy: And we all know we want to play a much bigger game, Alison it’s been fantastic talking to you about how to play a bigger game. Thank you.Alison: no worries, thank you.

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Video TranscriptionRowdy talks to...Hugh Gyton

Rowdy: I’m in Sydney City this afternoon, in the city and I bumped into a great friend of mine, Hugh Gy-ton. Hugh has a great deal of expertise about building skills around conversations that matter, high stakes conversations. And he’s worked with some of the biggest companies right through-out Australia and he built his career originally in the UK and moved out to Australia.

How are you today Hugh?

Hugh: I’m really good thanks Rowdy, you?

Rowdy: Yes, fantastic mate, fantastic. So I reckon moving from having starting your career in the UK, to packing your bags and coming to Australia and I suppose, starting again was playing a bigger game.

Hugh: Yes, absolutely. Yes I guess I’m somebody who’s always embraced opportunities. I don’t nec-essarily plan a long way ahead but when great opportunities come along I really love embracing them.

So I had a couple of friends who, about five years into my career, had the year in Australia and they said “Hugh, Sydney City for you, you’ve got to go there.” And it took me two years to con-vince my then employer to send me, because I didn’t want to be kicked out like they were if I was going to fall in love with the place. And here I am, you know, over 20 years later.

Rowdy: 20 years later and so how did you go about playing a bigger game when you got here?

Hugh: Well I was very fortunate getting here; I came straight into a job. So I landed Saturday and I’m at work Monday and I’ve got the company car Wednesday, so, you know, compared to some people who travel it was relatively easy. But it was learning how things are done differently, you know, I’ve not only come to Australia, I also went and spent a few years in Asia. And each time I’ve sort of done those things, what I’ve learned is, you know, be careful not to assume that the way you’ve always done things is the way you should do them moving forward. And whether that says you’re moving up in your career or it’s changing countries, you know, give yourself the op-portunity to get the feel of the place you’re in and start operating in the way they need you to for you to be successful.

Rowdy: Yes so I just heard a little pearl of wisdom drop out there, you know, that don’t do things the same way all the time. So are you saying that you are constantly looking for improvements?

Hugh: From a high stakes conversation point of view, what I’m always looking at is what is it the other

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party needs? Do they need me to change the way I’m communicating with them for them to be more comfortable with me?

So, you know, going up into Asia. When I was selling in England and in Australia I was always able to depend on my, sort of, intuitive instincts as to whether people like me, whether they were liking what I was telling them and trying to suggest that they might buy. Up in Asia, totally differ-ent game. And, you know, the way they respond, they’re lovely, hospitable people, they’re not going to offend you so they smile and nod and agree with everything. So you could come out of a meeting thinking, “I’ve really cracked that one. I’m going to make a motzer here.” And then nothing happens. So, you know, it’s really adapting and learning what you’ve got to do for them rather than what you want to do I think, is how I’ve managed to play maybe a bigger game than I would’ve done without those skills.

Rowdy: I think the other part of playing a bigger game, particularly in the scenario that’s evolved for you is that it can be quite scary, you know, starting a new career in a new country. And I know that you’ve started your own company as well. How do you overcome the scary stuff?

Hugh: I think a lot of this comes down to personality. I mean, I’m somebody who actually gets bored quite quickly. So I love change, I love the new environment, I love being at ground zero and the only way you can go is up. So for me, that’s sort of my life journey. I’ve really enjoyed having to deal with a bit of a confrontation in terms of, “Oh this is a big outside of my comfort zone, this is new. So I love that. So for me, yes there were times where it’s scary, I mean, before I actually got sent out to Australia, I was sent over by my employee in the UK to go and assess whether career was a market that they wanted to be in. And I was a young man in my 20s. That was scary. I was being wined and dined by some very big hitters in career, totally different culture. And yes when I was out there it was scary, I was naïve enough before going that I didn’t realise how scary it was going to be in the moment. And once you’re in it, you’ve just got to keep playing, you can’t get off can you.

Rowdy: Yes I love that. So now you’re starting to use the play a bigger game language.

Hugh: Anything to help Rowdy.

Rowdy: Get in there and just keep playing.

Hugh: Absolutely. You know, it’s about participation, it’s about the journey. You know, I find it inter-esting; goal setting is obviously a big part that people talk about. If I observe myself there are times when I’ve been very good at goal setting but also there are times when I’ve just put ideas out there and I haven’t necessarily really been as focused as traditional goal setting would say. But I’ve been willing to, you know, throw my energies into it and then when opportunities came across my bows I’ve just thought “Yes that’s where I want to go.” And I’ve just run with it. You know, I think it’s – enjoy the journey don’t get too worried about the destination.

Rowdy: Yes, yes. So the play a bigger game is all about goal kicking not goal setting, so there’s some

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synergies there. So, the people watching this video obviously are interested in playing a bigger game. They want to achieve more, be more, do more or have more in some way, shape or form.

Hugh: Yes.

Rowdy: On your experience, if you were to give them a tip or a couple of tips, what would they be?

Hugh: I think, be open. Be open to conversations, you know, you never know where you’re going to meet somebody who could help you play a bigger game. You know, that has got wisdom, has got a contact, actually wants to buy what it is you’re trying to sell or what you want to achieve. So be open to conversations, make sure when you’re having those conversations that you really are in them and you’re present in the conversation. It’s very easy to be distracted, I mean you know, Rowdy and I have thrown together this, we’ve just bumped into each other in the street and we’ve, you know, rather cheekily grabbed somebody’s desk and we’re in somebody’s office doing this. Well, you know, we could have just let that opportunity go by and here we are having this wonderful conversation on the video. So, you know, be prepared to engage and be present and not be distracted by the involvement around you when you’re in an important conversation.

Rowdy: Yes, so conversations matter, Hugh Gyton that’s your area of expertise. And this conversation did matter to me it’s been fantastic that we took those few minutes just to sit down and have this conversation and I reckon it’s really useful to the people watching this video. Thanks for taking the time.

Hugh: Rowdy, thanks for asking me, I really appreciate it and everybody out there, play a bigger game, have a great game.

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USEFUL RESOURCESTO HELP YOU BEGIN TO PLAY A BIGGER GAME!

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USEFUL RESOURCESTO HELP YOU BEGIN TO PLAY A BIGGER GAME!

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90 DAY CHALLENGE

Visit www.playabiggergame.com.au or simply scan the QR code below and take the 90 day challenge. Complete the online form and I will send you regular reminders, motivational tips and tools to keep you on track. The best way to ensure you stick to your action plan and make your goals a reality.

TAKE THE 90 DAY CHALLENGE

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www.playabiggergame.com.