Sarah (00:04):
Welcome to Spill the Biz. I’m Sarah Stowe. Head Editor at Inside Franchise Business. Join me as we have candid conversations with leading entrepreneurs and business owners behind some of the world’s most impressive franchise brands. At Inside Franchise Business, we acknowledge the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, we pay our respects to elders past and present.

Sarah (00:30):
Hello today I’m chatting with Jake Bromwich, Jake heads up the Australian mortgage broking firm Rams, and he loves the challenge. An aspirational mindset is part of his outlook. He stresses the importance of dreaming big both in business and personally. Whether it’s the challenge of an Ironman contest or a 223 kilometre trek in central Australia, Jake sets big goals. He shares his perspective on why a fear of failure is essential to achieving success. If you don’t have some fear of failure, you’re not trying hard enough. He says, if you let it consume you, you won’t make progress in this podcast. He shares some brilliant trips for tips for entrepreneurs and business executives. He talks about innovation, adversity, crisis management, and what makes for success.

Sarah (01:20):
Hi, Jake. Thanks for joining us today. We’ve caught you in between renovations, busy workload, and you’re just about to go off on the Trek. Can you just tell us about that?

Jake (01:32):
Yeah. Hi. So fantastic to be here with you today and thanks for having me. Yeah. Tomorrow, [I’m] heading off with my wife on a Trek for a week on the Larapinta Trail, across the Northern Territory desert, uh, to raise money for the kids’ cancer project. Who’s our charity partner we work with here at Rams. And so far we’re on track to raise $25,000 for them on behalf of Rams, which will be fantastic.

Sarah (01:56):
Oh, that is, that is fantastic. How long will this trek take you to do?

Jake (02:02):
It’s a full week, so we head off tomorrow and come back a week later. So it’s about just over 70 kilometres of walking across the Trek and camping and staying out in the deserts. I’m sure it’ll be hot during the day and cold at night -quite a challenge each day, but I’m sure the camp fire at the end of the day will be rewarding.

Sarah (02:22):
Oh, absolutely. Look, it sounds quite amazing. Have you done anything like that before? Is that the sort of thing that you you do?

Jake (02:29):
No, I haven’t. It’s the first one. I used to do a lot of sort of endurance sport with my training that stopped when kids came along. Uh, so this is the first time doing something like that in quite some time. So I don’t think that the bodies were where the mind is, but the mind is in a good place for it and that’ll be help me through.

Sarah (02:48):
Excellent. Well, when you have kids, it’s endurance training of another kind, isn’t it?

Jake (02:52):
Certainly

Sarah (02:53):
Entirely different experience. Yeah, there’s quite a lot of things that I wanted talk about, but maybe you could just tell us a little bit, just, just kind of, very briefly about, about Rams and, and the business and what Rams is all about.

Jake (03:06):
So Rams is a home lender at heart and we are on a franchise business model and yeah, we’re about helping Australians fulfil the dream of home ownership and providing those that need the help, a bit of extra help with that sort of local franchise service model as well. So Rams started up almost 27 years ago, um, to fill a gap in the market around that personalised service. And it sets us well today, even in a age with lots of digital innovation, the fact that we really focus on that customer experience and helping them through a complex period and, you know, big decision they’re making really, uh, sets us apart from the rest and, you know, to our success that we have today and particularly first home buyers and self-employed customers is where we excel, where that journey’s a little bit more challenging and that, um, guidance along the way from a specialist is helpful.

Sarah (03:59):
So, so how long have you been with Rams?

Jake (04:01):
So I’ve been, uh, managing director and CEO of Rams for almost four years now. Uh, so it’s a, a great time, you know, right now I’ve been through plenty of, uh, great upsides and challenging times and adversity you deal with as well, you know, COVID amongst those items as well. But, um, it really has given me the opportunity to understand the business in depth form some great relationships with our franchisees and go through the sort of challenging times. And now that you accelerator growth, we’re going through at the moment.

Sarah (04:29):
So, so we’ve not been talking that low and we’ve had the word challenge come up quite a lot already. And I think that’s probably fairly common in, in any, um, cha conversation that people have today about kind of business or, or, or anything. It, it does. Does challenge drive you and you also two questions you want here. Does, does challenge drive you and, and what’s the, what’s kind of your ambition, where, where does your ambition come from?

Jake (04:52):
Yeah, so I think I, I look at sort of you, what is at the heart of we do who’s our customer, right? And what’s the solution we’re providing for the customer, a opportunity in the market we’re making the most of, um, and work sort of from that, like you’re here to solve a customer problem or provide a service to a, a consumer, and then you can, you can build your yeah. Ambitions and your strategy around understanding sort of your, why what’s your purpose, what’s your vision, what’s your mission for your business? And, and they can sound like, you know, corporate strategy type words, vision, mission, et cetera. Um, but they’re critical because they go to the heart of why you do what you do and that helps you build your strategy. It helps you build your ambition around that. Um, and our vision and our mission.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
We actually work hand in hand with our franchisees to develop because it’s important, right? Cuz they’re small business owners, we’re a business. We have to be in partnership to get the same outcome at the end of the day. If they, they succeed, we succeed. Um, so therefore for us, it’s really about, you know, what’s the gap in the market or problem of solving. Who’s the consumer we’re helping and work through around that. So for us, the ambition then, you know, we understand what’s the opportunity we can go after. Um, but we can’t go after everything. We are, you know, we’re a business with big competitors out there that we have to compete against. Um, and therefore you’ve gotta think about, what’s your point of difference? What’s your specialty you go after. For us really the, you know, that first hand buyer and the self-employed customer stood out, cuz our franchisees are self-employed if everyone’s that owns a home has been a first home buyer.

Jake (06:23):
So really that local community local service stood out, particularly enables it a differentiator in the market compared to a, a big corporate with a big spread and a, you know, a bigger agenda getting targeted and focused on what it is you do do. It also means being very clear on what you don’t do. Um, one of the issues I quite often see in entrepreneurs and businesses where we’re excited, we’ve got lots of things. We wanna do lots of ideas going through our head. Um, but one of the reasons why we’re successful is that we’re actually really focused on what we do and what we don’t do and being clear of, um, there’s amazing opportunities. We could chase this business, but we need to stick to our needing in some regard and make sure we don’t distract our attention too much. So yes, we might look at, you know, other opportunities down the track or we look at other things, but it’s not, if it doesn’t fit into our core purpose, our core vision, our mission, we’re better off letting it go and letting someone else have a go at that. Um, so it doesn’t distract us from the big game of what we’re after.

Sarah (07:27):
And I think that’s all always interesting to hear, um, how brands and, and individuals within brands can kind of keep it a niche market. And I think that’s always the big challenge, isn’t it? You know, you know what, where you wanna go, but did you say there’s all these little, um, little toys that you could play with along the way and, and do you stay niche or do you kind of broaden your focus? And I think, um, it’s always interesting to hear how different brands do that. Cause that relates into innovation and where, and where do you, where do you invest? You know, where do you decide to innovate? So do you have a particular process that, that you go through? Is it, uh, if you’re looking at, at making strategic changes?

Jake (08:06):
Yeah, absolutely. So we, yeah, we do proper strategic reviews, you know, um, at regular intervals and then throughout the, you know, in between your strategic reviews, you get opportunities that get presented to you or that changing market dynamics, you know, COVID comes up and you reconsider certain aspects. Um, but I think there’s, there’s innovation in how you do what you do today. So you can innovate with our processes, with our technology, with our product solutions to help the existing customers. We’re trying to help, but in a different way or in, you know, make sure we’re moving with or keeping ahead of the, the change in the consumer demands. And then there’s innovation outside of your, yeah. Your mainstream that you go down that you can consider as well. Um, for us, when you look at that, we don’t, you got to spend a little bit of time on it, but if you spend too much time on it, you just start distracting yourself.

Jake (08:59):
Um, we definitely go through assessments for some of those, if we think they’re worthy considering, um, yeah. We look at the, the desirability of it, the feasibility of doing that and yeah, what’s the, what does it add to the bus business? Yeah. So does this add something to our business or not? So what’s the, what are the value across those? And we’ve actually got a sort of a method we’ve actually followed to then determine where would that sit in our priority list? Is it on strategy or should we adapt our strategy to go down that path? Yes or no. Then even if so, it’s like, where does it actually sit on our priority list? We’ve all only got X amount of capacity, um, small business owners. You’ve only got X amount of resources that you can call on. You can certainly add more if you need to, but you’ve gotta think, you know, you know, economics yeah. The use of gas resources. So for us, it’s then prioritizing that and being really critical on that, um, that you work out, you know, where does it sit in your priority or of what you want to do, what you wanna innovate in. Um, and that sort of helps us decide ultimately, do you do it or do you not do it? Um, and sometimes it’s a, a no for now. It’s not a hard, no, it’s a, it’s not the right time.

Sarah (10:08):
So you mentioned earlier when we were talking kind of about challenges about, um, COVID and adversity and on a personal level, I I’m interested in what difference, what impacts, um, working through the, the pandemic has had on, on you in terms of your work life balance, in terms of how you view what you do at work, your work structures, has there been any fundamental kind of changes?

Jake (10:34):
Yeah, absolutely. So work life balance, I think became more balanced in COVID. So there’s certain aspects in the initial stage of crisis management where yeah, the work life balance went to work, cuz you’re in crisis management mode, just solving, you’ve got, you know, responsibility for all these small business owners plus yourself and everything and your own people and employees. So it’s sort of crisis management daily meetings, where are we, you know, what needs to be done tomorrow? What are the S what’s happened today? How do we get there? So there’s sort of that element. But then as we got the structures in the early weeks, um, and as we then got the, you know, the rhythm and the focus right. Of what we had to do over time now, the work life balance is a better balance, uh, for me personally. So I, you know, I never used to be able to drop the kids at school, pick the kids up at school, do their sport.

Jake (11:27):
Um, so now the ability to work from home a lot more and the fact that it’s, um, it’s a norm for a lot of people, right. That balance of in the office versus at home. So for me, I have a balance now of days at home and, uh, days in the office and yesterday was a, a day that started at home. And then I went out and visited the local franchisee for a celebration event and then went back home, finished that off. Uh, and then yeah, son came home and took him to football training and helped, you know, coach the local footy team for the under nine. So it’s sort of a, it’s enabled you to put things in perspective a lot more. I think family, which has always been important to me gets more attention now. Uh, and just that ability to, and it’s probably the acceptance right.

Jake (12:08):
That we do meetings virtually sometimes. So I think we got COVID I found challenging when it was work from home the whole time. Cause I love connecting and interacting with people and that was really challenging. Um, homeschooling was challenging. Uh, but I think now it’s a better balance. Like I love getting out and connecting the franchisees. I love our big events where we’ve got lots of people, but I actually, I love being able to like walk my walk, my son to school, um, have a chat with the other parents on the way back and grab a, maybe grab a coffee on the way back to the house. So, uh, it certainly brought a better balance, uh, for me in my life.

Sarah (12:45):
What about adversity? I mean, you said there that 110, 200% of your, your retire, your effort, your creativity, motions, everything is kind of piled into how do you keep the business going? Um, when you, when you are in kind of crisis management, how do you personally approach approach adversity? What, what’s your philosophy? What’s the way that you do

Speaker 4 (13:10):
Things? Yeah. So I think for me, communication is critical crisis management. Um, open, transparent communication engagement is, is key, right? You’ve gotta, everyone needs to be on the same page. Um, but people then need to be really clear around who is doing what, um, there’s a natural tendency in crisis management. Everyone wants to jump in and help and do things. But I think the issue sometimes then is you need real clarity of who’s doing what otherwise you’ve got, you know, the old, too many cooks scenario happens really quickly cuz everyone thinks that’s the most important thing and tries to do it and you end up with, you know, confusing each other. So for me, you know, there’s the element of, you know, how I run that work was you was literally, you know, once, twice a day, really clear on who is doing what and communicating to those that aren’t involved in the doing what’s happening.

Jake (13:59):
So they don’t think they need to jump in and do it so they can focus on what they need to do. Uh, and on a personal level, uh, exercise is critical for me. It’s the, the healthy body healthy mind, um, making sure you have that structure. So for me it was, you know, every morning, um, it was a, the first hour of the day was walking. I didn’t just go for a walk. I actually, over that hour I probably had about five to six phone calls, you know, lookeded at and responded to emails. But it meant that I had that sort of healthy body, healthy mind and I felt had a refreshed start to every day. So it’s actually still booked in my diary now from yeah, eight to 9:00 AM as you know, phone calls, which is actually leave the house. Cause otherwise you’re in the house for everything.

Jake (14:44):
It was leave the house, have that time getting, you know, the natural endorphins up, but it wasn’t sort of, it was double productivity at that time. So for me, it’s that get the exercise in when, you know, when things get stressful, it’s actually step away and clear your mind, don’t stay in it the whole time. You gotta step back, do what it is you like. It could be painting, reading, or book could be running, writing, whatever, just make sure you got that, that thinking time and allows you to put, um, think into perspective as well.

Sarah (15:13):
Do you have a fear of failure?

Speaker 4 (15:15):
A fear of failure? Um, I think if you don’t have some sort of fear of failure, you’re, you’re not trying hard enough. <laugh> you’re being too conservative on the edge. I think you’ve, if you’re not thinking about what could go wrong, you are putting yourself at risk. Uh, you’re putting your business risk. You’re putting yourself at risk now running a, a bank is yeah. And a lender. You know, we live off risk management, like, you know, financial risk management, nonfinancial risk management. But I think if you’re not thinking through the, what could go wrong and having that little bit of a fear, um, you’re not sort of challenging yourself, um, hard enough and you’re actually, that’s a risk to your business and you probably should be more worried. So absolutely. But you have that fear. But for me, if I have that clarity of what I want to do gone through, I’ve got the strategy, right?

Jake (16:06):
The real clarity of what we need to do to deliver on that. Um, you have to back yourself in and you have to back that in yes. You might have your little fears or yeah, sometimes it’s a big fear, but if you you’ve gotta trust in yourself, make sure you’ve gone through the right process to develop your strategy and then get about backing yourself in and things will come along the way and people will, you know, dooms days will pop in and say, oh, what about this? Or what about that? You’ve gotta, yeah, you’ve gotta have your strategy and stick to it. Um, otherwise you risk actually failing because you fail to execute and if you fail to execute, that’s probably your bigger risk of failure. Um, so absolutely there’s sort of fear of failure that drives, you know, appropriate strategy and risk management setting. Um, but you don’t, if you let it consume you, you won’t make progress.

Sarah (16:56):
And, and on the flip side of that, obviously success, that’s what everyone is aiming for. How do you define success for yourself?

Jake (17:05):
Yeah. So for me, yeah, success is being clear about, you know, what it is you are, you are trying to achieve and setting clear goals and aspirations. Um, it’s an interesting one. We had a conversation with my team about bit over a year ago when we were talking about, um, goals. And then we decided to change the conversation. I wasn’t happy that we weren’t being, we weren’t challenging ourselves enough. So I said, let’s talk about aspirations. So where do we want to get to? What would we like to do? And all of a sudden you start to open yourself up to what’s possible in a greater method. Now the difference between that though is if you don’t meet the aspiration, you haven’t failed. You’ve you’ve, you’ve probably got further than you thought you would’ve got, if you just set a target or a goal. So for me, there’s sort of the, when you go with that aspirational mindset, um, it’s okay to not meet the full aspiration.

Jake (18:00):
Like you’re definitely driving for it, but if you meet them all, you’re not actually setting big enough aspirations, um, from my point of view. So it’s probably that sort of dream big think big plan, big, um, and then focus on how far, how close you can get to that, cuz you sometimes you’ll get there this year. We’ve, you know, we’re actually on track to beat the aspiration that a lot of people thought we could never get to. Um, but if we just went with the goal, we would’ve been satisfied with the goal, whereas now we’re actually gonna exceed the aspiration we set and that’s sort of, that’s really satisfying for me. Uh, and that’s in personal life and in work as well in personal life, I started doing triathlons, um, years and years ago, pre kids. And then I set myself a goal of doing a full Ironman.

Jake (18:46):
So yeah, 3.8 K swim, 180 K riding, a marathon to finish. And I would never have dreamt of being able to do that. I’d never run more than 5k in my life. Never swung more than, you know, 200, 300 meters. Um, but I set the aspiration out and I loved it. Um, the challenge and the, the method to get there, the process, the training plan you’re put in place. And it’s interesting, you work backward from what’s that aspiration. What do I need to do for the 16 weeks leading up to that aspiration to make it happen? Um, and that’s how work in business set the aspiration and what are the things you need to do to get there. And for me, there’s the, there’s also, what do I not do you have to prioritize cuz if you try and do it all, um, you won’t get there triathlon multidisciplinary, if you try and, you know, swim, run and ride every day, ly a full time job, you’re gonna hurt yourself. Yes. So you’ve gotta, you gotta work out what you’re going to do each day.

Sarah (19:43):
Um, that kind of need leads quite neatly into sort of talking about leadership, which, and I’ve got a few points that I want to raise here. So, um, you were, um, ranked as the number one, top 30 in the top 30 franchise executives, um, at the beginning of this year. So congratulations on that. Yeah. And that’s, um, that’s a, a report that, um, we put out at the such franchise business executives, which is essentially recognizing high performing executives across the franchise field business. And um, when, when we asked you how you would describe your leadership style, you said driven entrepreneurial and accountable. I think we can kind of see the driven, um, entrepreneurial and accountable. I just wonder if you’ve got any particular comments on, on how you see that translating into

Jake (20:37):
Yeah. So I think on the entrepreneurial there’s the, the, yeah, in that aspirational comment we had, right. You’ve got to, you’ve gotta think big, you’ve gotta think beyond I’m here to run a business or I’m here to do this or that, or, you know, here’s the, the boundaries we operate within today. You need to challenge if they are the right boundaries, um, that you operate within today. Now, entrepreneurial doesn’t mean you go and do a hundred different things. But what it means is for me is it, it’s just stretching your thinking of what is possible, what you could do. But then the accountable front is then being very clear and providing clarity of what you are gonna do and what that direction is then holding yourself and your team to account to that. So if you don’t have the accountability behind it, you don’t deliver on the execution of your plan.

Jake (21:30):
So for me, the accountability is, you know, do what you say. He’ll do. Uh, I remember when I started, uh, as a franchise executive at our conference almost F four years ago, uh, I stood up on stage and said to our franchisees, you know, judge me by my actions, not my words for me, that’s accountability, right? It’s not about the, the words that come outta your mouth. It’s about what you do and being accountable for what you do. And that’s then how I lead my team as well. I can’t do everything. I don’t have all the ideas as leveraging the people around you from an entrepreneurial side. And then being clear on where we’re going clear on, who does what, and then hold people to account, uh, for doing that. And, you know, you know, thanks again for the recognition of franchise executive of the year.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Um, wasn’t something I was expecting, but yeah, very humble to, uh, receive that award. And I think speaking through some of these things, hopefully there’s some lessons for business owners as well in terms of that entrepreneurial is not do a hundred things. It’s really stretch your thinking, use the people around you as well, to come up with those thoughts and new ways of potentially doing things. And sometimes it’s actually sticking to what you’re doing really well and making sure you’ve stretched your thinking around you. How could you be attacked? Who’s the disruptors in your industry, how you’re gonna protect yourself against that. Um, but then clear on what you’re gonna do and hold yourselves accountable to it.

Sarah (22:54):
So you, you, you did mention, um, in the, in earlier conversations around the top 30 about human connection, being something that was really important to you and something that could obviously be that we all lacked through the pandemic. And, and I noticed in that conversation today that you, you mentioned it a bit earlier about getting out and, and meeting people. And so how, how do you see that sort of progressing that, that need for human connection

Jake (23:19):
In terms of, oh, it’s, it’s part of a, a, a psychology makeup. It’s, it’s part of your, our structure as a human being. Um, if you do, you know, the psychology studies, you, you learn about the fact that yeah, that humans thrive off that. Now some people need it more than others, or they’re get in different ways than others. Some want the, the big crowd of a thousand people around others, like the one on one type connection, but we all need some, you know, connection and human connection to fulfill ourselves. And we all get that in a slightly different way. I think going forward, that’s going to continue to be critical, how you get it, how you do it, the formats might be different to pre COVID. Um, but I know like speaking with our franchisees and catching up with Tina yesterday, she was sort of, she was talking about the fact that COVID reminded her, why she’s a franchisee, cuz she’s missed the conferences.

Jake (24:10):
She’s missed the state meetings where you’re physically contacting and talking to these people. Now we did WebEx as there was lots of phone calls, but the actual human interaction, the laughter the energy you get off being in the room with other people, um, is paramount for people. So I think the human connection will never go away. There’s lots of digitization of stuff happening in the world and automation. Uh, but that means you can spend your time and your human connection where it’s more valuable. It means you don’t have to leave the house to do tasks that you don’t get that human centered connection out of, uh, means when you leave the house, you’re doing it to get the nice human centered connection. I mean, personally for me at work, um, I could sit at work now on video conference meetings all day, cuz half the people aren’t here, they’re at home and you could fill your time doing whatever you wanted. But if I’ve got a, a 1530 minute gap, I walk around the office and go and talk to people like it’s just enjoy, what’s engaging it, you know, reminds people where you come to work and what we actually missed about, um, that connection side of it.

Sarah (25:16):
Yeah. Yep. I think you, yeah, that’s so true that we all do love to kind of get together. And I think any opportunity that, that, that we’ve had through work to do that has, has really paid off. Um, look, Jake, thank you so much for your time today. Um, it’s been very nice to, to have a chat and, um, to hear some of your perspectives on, on business and uh, goal setting aspirations. I really like that the change in language makes such a difference. Doesn’t it sometimes just changing on work, made the big difference to a result. So thank you for your time and good luck with the big walk.

Jake (25:51):
Excellent. Thank you. And I’ll look forward to letting you know how it goes and thanks for your, uh, time today as well. Sarah, it was great to catch up.

Sarah (26:01):
Thanks again for listening to spill of biz. Don’t forget to subscribe. And if this podcast sparked your interest in world of franchising, make sure you check out our website Inside Franchise Business.com.au for more great info and tips on how to get started.