Robert Brus

Full transcript: Robert Brus on London Real

1:05 This is London Real, I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Robert Brus, recent graduate of the Broadcast Yourself Accelerator. Welcome. Thanks, mate, great to be. Tell us about you. Where are you from, what do you do? I’m from Sydney, Australia. I run a digital marketing agency, and I was really, really interested in learning how to broadcast and assume where that could all take me. So it’s really great to be here at the graduation and to be part of all this.

1:33 What was going on in your life to make you decide that now is the time, I actually need to pull the trigger and start that podcast? Well, look, I always knew that having a show of some sort would be the ultimate networking hack. And digital marketing, that industry is very commoditised, it’s extremely competitive, so I wanted to create something that I could use that would be a network hack for me.

1:59 And if I can pick up the phone and invite people that I would otherwise have a hard time getting hold of to come on my show, I know that relationships would be formed from there, and things just happen on the foundation of those relationships. So that was my aim, that was my ultimate goal, to be broadcasting myself, and that’s actually what’s happened, and it’s worked really well for me, so I’m very happy with the result.

2:23 And why hadn’t you done that a year before or two years before? Was there anything that was holding you back? If I’m really honest about it, I just didn’t think that I had any business in doing that, and I didn’t really feel like my opinions mattered that much. I definitely hadn’t found my voice, and I didn’t know how to articulate myself properly.

2:41 And the overarching thing with all of that, I really wasn’t sure what a show would be about and how I could create something that would be a networking hack, and it took something like a London Real Broadcast Yourself course to help bring that out and to discover that and find out what that was. Okay, and what about the people around you? What did they say when you say, I want to broadcast myself? Your friends, family, co-workers, even competitors in the industry?

3:04 They know that I’m a little bit crazy. I know that I’m always at new stuff and trying to do new stuff and stay on the leading edge of things, so I was really well supported. I had a lot of people around me encouraging me, and, you know, I don’t think there’s any such thing as a self-made man. I think you need support, you need mentors, you need coaches, you need training, but most of all you need loved ones around you.

3:27 And sometimes the loved ones around you can be naysayers, but I haven’t found that those people have been naysayers at all for me. They’ve been really supportive, really caring, and some of them are my biggest fans, which is really nice. It’s really nice, and it’s great to get some constructive criticism from them and not, like, nasty stuff. So I haven’t really dealt with any sort of hate or anything like that, so it’s just been really supportive.

3:50 Okay, and why London Real? Okay, I figured that you had progressed such a long way. I’ve been watching your story and your journey for such a long time, and I just knew in my heart of hearts that there was more to broadcasting, more to podcasting, than the mechanical recording of something. Mechanical recording of things is easy. Producing video content when you’ve got a digital marketing agency and you’ve got people to help you, that’s relatively simple to do.

4:15 But there’s something going on inside your mindset, something going on inside your head, and I knew that I needed a little bit of a hand to get across the line there. I knew that I needed a coach, I knew that I needed a mentor, and London Real was something that always attracted me. It’s been really great for me.

4:32 Okay, talk to me about this first week, where I drop you in this private Facebook group, 150 broadcasters from around the world, people completely different than you. I’m asking you to be on these live calls with me, one from here, one from my home, accountability doc, uploading videos. What’s that first week like? It’s like drinking from a firehose, is the way I describe it. It all comes at you pretty quickly, pretty fast.

4:58 But if you just stay ahead of the curve and concentrate on what you’re doing and just follow the process… I had to put my ego aside. It was like, what do you want me to do that for? Why am I doing that? I know how to do that already. And I really had to stop and check myself and really, okay, you paid for the course, you’re on the course now, you’ve just got to go through the process and work through that.

5:14 And that was really good. I’m glad that I did that early on, because if I knew what I was doing, I wouldn’t be on the course. So, but I did have to check myself a couple of times and do that. But when you put us in the groove, then you told us the first thing that we had to do was to put a video out there and tell everybody that we were gonna create a podcast and broadcast ourselves.

5:37 And almost like my initial reaction was not love doing that, but then I realised it was my ego saying, hey, you’ve got to go out there and do that. You paid the money for the course, you’ve got to go into it, so put all of that aside and get on with it and do it. So that’s what I did. And, you know, meeting 150 other broadcasters, at first it’s a little bit awkward. You know, you’ve got to get to know people. Who are these people? It feels like a bit of a competition.

6:01 It’s like you’re always comparing yourself to these really polished guys and girls there, and I’m like, man, I look terrible compared to them. But you realise very quickly that you’re all on the same journey together, and very quickly you form some really close friendships and some great bonds in there as well. So that’s been really invaluable for me, and I’m glad that happened early on as well. We got all of that awkwardness out of the way straightaway. It was good.

6:18 Tell me about your podcast, and tell me how it unfolded. My podcast is called Go All In, and I went on a little bit of a journey on the front end of the course, where I had to come up with an idea, and my original idea was to do something in and around the marketing space, in the digital marketing space, because the whole thing was supposed to be a networking hack for me. So I really wanted to try and figure out a way where I could weave that into the actual podcast.

6:41 But when I looked at it, and upon reflection, and all the exercises that you have to go through on the course, I realised that my heart just wasn’t in it. And then I thought maybe it’s something to do with futurism, the future of stuff, because I’m always in and around that stuff anyway with technology, and I realised my heart wasn’t in that. And I felt like I had these ideas and I was suddenly at square one.

7:12 And I was forced to look inside of myself and ask myself an important question, and that was, what is it that you’re gonna talk about for 500 or a thousand episodes? And I didn’t know. I was completely stonewalled. And when that happened to me, it didn’t feel like resistance. My ideas just didn’t resonate, I didn’t feel them in my heart, so I wasn’t going to go down that path. And I thought, just give yourself some time.

7:34 And I looked at my life and how I play in life, and when I do something, I go all in on it. Now that’s not something that I came up with, that’s a modern-day catch. When you’re gonna go all in, you’re gonna put it all on black and you’re going to have a crack at it. And I realised that everybody has got a go-all-in story. At some point in your life you’ve gone all in on something.

7:59 And you either fail or you’ve succeeded. And I think there’s so many lessons to be learned in telling stories like that, about people that have gone all in. And as a result of that, you know, the genesis of the idea was, I want to tell other people’s stories and be able to facilitate those stories, but I also want to be able to engage with that and share my point of view, my perspective, on those things. And I quickly discovered that my opinions did matter, my voice did matter, and it helped me find my voice.

8:30 And when I realised that I’m the sort of character that goes all in on stuff, I’m gonna go all in on this, and I painted myself into a corner. I can’t go and call a podcast Go All In and not go all in on it. It’s the ultimate hypocrisy. So I’ve gone all in on it, and it has been a wild ride. It’s been spectacular. Tell us, what’s been wild about it? What have you done?

8:46 Oh man, I just, the people that I’m attracting to the podcast, the way that they articulate their stories. And there’s been a couple of things that have happened along the way, particularly in and around the health space. So I told a couple of health-related stories, and for me, as a 40-year-old Australian male, I mean, reasonably good shape, I look after myself, I don’t really drink, I don’t smoke, I train a lot, all that stuff. I don’t have any health problems.

9:19 So hearing somebody else’s health challenges and health stories, and how they went all in on trying to get themselves better and came out the other side, was really poignant for me, because I was drawn in to their stories. And when you hear a story like that, you always try and put yourself in there: how would I handle that? Would I do that? Man, you are one tough cookie. You’ve got a really strong mindset to be able to have gone through that and come out the other side well from that.

9:43 And I realised throughout that process that if there was just one person, just one single person out of all of this that got some hope from that story, I was doing something pretty special. And I felt like less of something that was fun and a networking hack, and now I feel more obliged to tell these stories.

10:06 Because if I can just give one person hope about a particular topic, whether that’s related to your health, your relationship, your finances, your attitude, something you’re studying in academia, whatever it might be, if I can just get one or two nuggets of gold out of every guest that I have on, and that knowledge is imparted to somebody else, that’s the ultimate reward. Servitude is the ultimate reward.

10:23 And serving others and giving back like that is the most selfish thing you can do, because it’s the best thing. You know, you don’t feel any better than that when you’re helping somebody else. So that’s been a really interesting journey for me. So that kind of went from a networking hack to something that has become really quite deeply personal, and become a bit of a mission actually. It’s pretty good.

10:46 Yeah, I’m so glad to hear that, because if you start off just trying to hack the network, you only get so far. Different if you start off by putting real genuine emotion into something that’s gonna value to the world, the sky’s the limit. And I can see you’re feeling that. You’ve had some amazing success, you’re landing incredible guests. How many shows have you recorded so far?

11:01 13 in the can. When I get back from London, I’ve got another 12 interviews lined up in the subsequent week and a half or something like that. So I’m just going as quickly as I can to build a body of work, and I’m trying to get, so my initial metric is 30 and then 250, and then I’ll kind of dial it back. And in that process I’ve got a whole series of products that I’m going to deploy as a whole plan and a whole business associated with this. It’s very exciting. I love it.

11:24 What did you struggle with the most on this course? What was hard? My ego. Yeah, my ego. And one of my colleagues on the course, Sarafina, she’s got a podcast called “day Yuri go marry his soul”, and such a clever play on words, it’s so clever. And I realised that all of these things that I was saying to myself, that you have no business in broadcasting, nobody’s going to listen to you, your opinions don’t matter, all of that stuff, that’s my ego saying that.

11:55 But after I told that health story, that got at the core of my soul, and that’s what really mattered. So I had to put my ego aside and the things that I thought that I knew, and I did. I just, I played for that, I went all in, and I put my ego aside, and when I did that, it started to come naturally. It wasn’t so forced anymore, and I felt like it was becoming a little bit easier.

12:17 And of course, you know, it takes time to hone a craft, to learn interview skills and techniques and things like that, and it’s gone a bit sideways on me a couple of times, and I had a little giggle to myself quietly as I try and recover. And it’s fun being… I’m really comfortable being uncomfortable. I like that feeling, because I know that I’m growing when I’m doing that.

12:41 And each time I sit down the microphone or sit down at my computer and prepare for an interview, that really feels like I’m growing just a tiny little bit. Every time, you’re not growing, you’re dying, and every time I sit down there, I’m growing. And by doing lots and lots of interviews back-to-back and backing them up, I feel like my growth will accelerate. Nice.

12:57 And so it’s great. What’s it like being in London and actually seeing in the flesh all these people that you’ve been competing with and collaborating with and everything for the past eight weeks? Fabulous, fabulous. That’s probably the top thing in all of this for me. When you have an idea to do something like this, it’s hard to find like-minded people.

13:21 I come from a city of three or four million people, and I don’t really know anybody else out there broadcasting, so it’s hard to have a conversation about it. People understand what you’re talking about, they understand what you’re doing and what you’re attempting to do, but they don’t really get it, because it’s not something they’re doing or trying to do. So having a little family of people here that are all doing the same things as what we are is really valuable.

13:43 And seeing them face-to-face is unreal, because we’ve been on a journey for seven, eight weeks together. We all know each other pretty well, we all communicate offline as well as online during the course, and there’s a real collaboration going on. And since I’ve been here in London for the last four or five days, I’ve had half a dozen, approaching a dozen meetings by the time I leave here, so it’s really, really cool. It’s been great.

14:06 Next 12 months, you’re gonna be with your group, you guys have got accountability meetings and all this set up. What does your world look like in 12 months? What is the podcast, the business, what’s your vision? I want to create a movement. I want to create a movement of people who only know how to go all in, and when they apply themselves to something and they have a crack, they go all in on it, and no matter what happens, they keep pushing forward and they keep moving towards success.

14:31 And I feel like the more stories that I can tell, the bigger the body of work becomes, the bigger the audience becomes, and the more that message resonates with people. And I know in my heart that it’s had an impact on people already, because some people have said to me, from this course and some of my friends and my family and some other listeners, in emails and text messages I’ve received, some Facebook messages: I was doing this, Rob, and, you know, I thought, you know, I should go all in on this.

15:01 And man, I didn’t think that just after a couple of weeks of being on a course and, you know, a dozen podcasts, that I’d really be able to affect the change in somebody like that. So the next 12 months for me is going to be critical in building that brand, and it’s gonna be really super exciting. I’m excited by it. It’s a fun topic, it’s a fun thing, and I’m really enjoying myself as that moves forward, and as I roll out a series of products that are associated with that.

15:27 You can go all in on anything. You can go all in on your relationships. I’ve got a really good partner that I work with, her name’s Ellie Johnson. She works in the truth and lies space, so if you have a hard time finding a partner, she will help you spot a lie, help you find a better partner, and she’s got this amazing course that she’s put together. And that’s an example of something that I’ve been working with and on. I’ve got health and nutrition courses there, I’ve got some digital marketing courses that go there as well.

15:50 This is very, very exciting for me, and just collaborating with my team over the next 12 months is going to be exciting as well, because there’s a couple of those guys and girls in there, they’re gonna come along for the ride as well. I’m excited, man. Good stuff. How are you different? Like, I only know this guy, but if we walked out on the street and met the Robert that didn’t take this course, like, what’s that guy like?

16:14 I think I checked my ego, definitely. I didn’t realise that my ego was so far forward in everything that I did, and I feel a lot more relaxed about stuff now, and the ability to communicate with people I feel like has improved incredibly. And I didn’t realise how quickly, when you put yourself out there and broadcast yourself, I didn’t realise how quickly that would happen, where other people would resonate with you, they resonate with your message, and they’re saying stuff to you.

16:47 So when you find yourself in those positions, you find yourself in a position of leadership, and when you’re in a position of leadership, everyone’s watching. And for me, the most important thing is my kids, and I know my kids are watching, and I’m trying to lead from the front, thereby setting a good example by being a good person, not swearing in the traffic too much, but doing the right things and leading from the front, so they can see if you really apply yourself and you go all in on stuff, this is what could happen. And it’s been an incredible ride. What a journey. What would you say to someone who’s thinking about taking this course but just is on the fence, not sure whether this is the right use of their time and their money? You’re gonna have to commit, you’re gonna have to go all in, and if you do that, you’ll come out on the other side of it and you won’t know yourself. I think you said that early on in the course: by the end of this course you’ll be a different person, you’ll feel differently, you’ll look at the world differently, and everything will feel different.

17:35 And you also said that podcasting and interviewing is the Fountain of Youth, and, Jesus, I would have to echo that. That is so unbelievably true. And when I look back at where I was two or three months ago, thinking about doing something like this, and I just dived in and had a go at it, and here I am in London a couple of months later. Who would have thought? If you’re thinking about it, don’t think about it, just pull the trigger, just go all in and hook into it, because it’s well, well worth it.

17:59 Robert, it’s been awesome having you on this course. I mean, we talked a couple of times in front of the whole class on the Zoom, and, you know, you were just there, you were going all in, and you pushed yourself to make it happen, and I love your energy. Welcome to the family. I’m expecting big things from you, and I know you are too, and I’ll be watching you for the next 12 months and probably 12 years.

18:23 So let’s do some big things. Let’s change the world, add value one person at a time, and I think we’re gonna be on this journey that we won’t even recognise in a few years. So thank you for going all in. No worries, thank you. All right, all in, mate.