EP.7 Franziska Iseli | MODERN ONTRAPRENEUR

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EPISODE 7
FRANZISKA ISELI: BASIC BANANAS

A Swiss-born Aussie, Franziska Iseli forecasts and executes strategies with precise results as co-founder of Basic Bananas. In 2013, she was awarded the Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Today, she acts as leading marketing strategist for not one, but five businesses. Notorious for bending the rules, Franziska frequently challenges the status quo of business with her adventurous and inquisitive nature. On top of that she speaks five languages, spends a good chunk of her time surfing, and sponsors several nonprofits.

IN THIS EPISODE

It’s hard not to get fired up in Franziska’s presence. We would know. The thrill-seeker has been a guest at ONTRApalooza several years running. A perpetual idea machine, Franziska stopped by MODERN ONTRAPRENEUR to school us on the power of a strong brand, building an empowered team, and never compromising on the fun stuff that makes being an entrepreneur worth it.

JUMP TO TOPIC

0:51 - Be an Idea Machine
The daily brain training activity that keeps Franziska’s bulb bright

2:15 - Benefits of Building a Strong Brand
Build a strong brand, and your team and customers will stand behind you.

3:02 - Never Make it About Money
Your team needs something to shoot for. Here’s why it shouldn’t be money.

5:02 - Advice With a Grain of Salt
How Basic Bananas almost lost its name.

7:14 - The Ripple Effect Legacy
The more lives she touches, the more lives they’ll touch.

8:38 - Big Bucket List
Franziska’s ever-expanding to-do list calls for travel and music.

10:20 - Never Compromise on the Fun Stuff
Success comes from happiness, not the other way around.

12:00 - The Two Defining Qualities of Modern Entrepreneurs
Franziska believes strongly in two — not just one — qualities of a modern entrepreneur.

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

LR Welcome to MODERN ONTRAPRENEUR. Today, we have Franziska Iseli, who is the co-founder, with Christo Hall, who we had on this show a while back, of Basic Bananas, which is a leading marketing education organization in Australia.

She has also started several other businesses, including Oceanlovers.global, YoursSocially.com, and Impacteurs.com. In 2013, Franziska was awarded the New South Wales Young Entrepreneur Award, recognizing her innovation, creativity, and philanthropic involvement. Thanks so much for being here, Franziska.

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FRANZISKA ISELI

We measure our success in how many people we touch, how many lives we touch, we change rather than how much money we make.

FI Thanks for having me.

LR Awesome. We just have the six questions. We'll just dive right in.

FI Sure.

LR Tell me what you think is your most important unique skill and how that skill has contributed to your success.

FI I think, probably, one of my skill set I'm pretty good at is leading people and motivating people to do certain things so, usually, it's sort of a bigger vision, and coming up with ideas. The guys said ... At the office, they always say, "You're the idea machine." I also train my brain. Pretty much every morning I come up with random ideas just for the sake of it.

LR You train your brain.

FI Yeah, every morning.

LR How?

FI I just come up ... I think I got this from James Altucher. Every morning when I wake up, I meditate and go surfing and do all that, and then I just write down 10 ideas about anything random.

It could be ... I would see maybe a glass or a book. Let's say, if I look at a book, I will go, "Okay, what could be 10 chapters of my next book?" I might never write that book, but I just train my brain to come up with ideas really fast, so that I can be this idea machine, and it's totally working.

LR How long have you been doing that?

FI Maybe over a year.

LR Yeah.

FI Yeah.

LR Interesting. How long have you been in business at Basic Bananas?

FI Basic Bananas has been around for about eight years.

LR Eight years.

FI Yeah. Before, I had another business, Swiss travel agency in Australia, and it failed.

LR Okay.

FI It totally failed. Yeah. I was in advertising at the same time, and I didn't really put all my heart in it, so it didn't go far.

LR But Basic Bananas is going well.

FI Yeah.

LR Yeah. Tell me what's working today to help grow Basic Bananas.

FI A few things are working super well. Right now, I can really see how the team is working incredibly well. They just love what they do. They love ONTRAPORT and they're super behind the brand.

That's the second thing that is working really well is the brand. That's something else that I'm a big advocate about is branding and building really strong brands. Those two together, I think if you have a really strong brand, and we'll talk about that at the conference tomorrow, actually, is when you have a really strong brand, your team will get behind it, but also your customers will get behind it.

I think our brand is working really well and how we're adding value to people and then the team, of course, we couldn't be doing this without the team.

LR Yeah. What do you learn about growing a team that's effective?

FI What I'm learning or what I've learned?

LR Yeah. What you have learned.

FI A few things that are really important, I think, that have created this team are giving them responsibility. First of all, giving them the vision and constantly inspiring them by showing them, "Hey, this is what our vision is," and it's not about money. Basically, it's all about making a difference in people's lives. We measure our success in how many people we touch, how many lives we touch, we change rather than how much money we make.

The vision first and then letting people take responsibility for whatever they're doing and also letting people move within the company. One of my fantastic team members, Aga, she started off as admin, and she is such an angel. She got a little bit bored, and I don't ever want to lose her.

LR Right.

FI Which is about paying attention, listening, and then also maybe finding other roles in the business. Now, she's doing marketing and she's doing a lot of Ontraport, actually, and she's loving it. Maybe in a few years, she'll go, "Actually, I'd love to do a little bit more partnerships. I'd love to do more speaking" or something else.

LR Right.

FI Really, just, I guess, going where they are good at, their strengths and also developing them. We do a lot of courses. We brought them to the Ontraport conference, three of the team members, so constantly investing in their own development.

LR Yeah. Awesome.

FI Of course, we do a lot of extracurricular activities. We have board meetings, where we go to the beach and we sit on a surfboard, where we have our board meetings on the beach. We do a lot of outside work, outdoors activities, because that's our ...

LR That's your brand. Yeah.

FI Yeah.

LR There's really participating in their growth as people and in their careers.

FI Yeah. Exactly.

LR Awesome. Cool. You've been doing this for eight years now at Basic Bananas and obviously, we all learn a ton as we go along. We can look back and see that things could've gone differently if I had known then what I know now. What is that thing for you, if you could give yourself a tip eight years ago?

FI Yeah. One of the biggest tips that I am giving people now, including myself, is don't take all advice. Take most advice with a grain of salt because we all get advice. We all hire mentors and we have coaches, and they are all well-meaning. Pretty much, everyone is an expert nowadays, so people are constantly giving you advice.

Sometimes, if you are maybe a little bit unsure about which way to go, it can be very easy to go in a certain direction that actually is not your way to go. My advice to myself and, that I'm using now, for everyone that asks me for advice is don't take all advice, but more than that, just listen to your own intuition.

I think this is something that can be trained. I'm a Swiss-Aussie. A Swiss doesn't really learn how to be intuitive growing up because we're very logical and we live by list, so I had to learn how to be intuitive, but it's definitely been one of the best pieces of advice that I have been given is to listen to my gut more, intuition, and don't take every piece of advice.

One of the first pieces of advice I got from a mentor, who I highly respect, fantastic businesswoman, she said, "Franziska, you're not going to call a business "Basic Bananas." There is no chance. I said, "Sharon ... "

LR "I am."

FI "I am." I said, "I'll take most of your advice, but I will call this business "Basic Bananas." I worked in branding before, and I knew in my gut that this can work." Now, of course, when I talk to her, she laughs and she's like, "Luckily, you didn't listen to my advice back then."

LR Right. What's a piece of advice that you took that you regret taking?

FI I don't know if I've ever taken ... I don't take a lot of advice. If I-

LR Even in the beginning, huh?

FI I probably have, but I usually forget the negative things.

LR Yeah. Just the positive.

FI I don't know. There probably are things in it that I have maybe taken that I ... I can't think of one right now. Maybe it will come back as we talk.

LR Okay. It sounds like you've got a big focus on making a difference in other people's lives. When you think about your own life, going forward, 10, 20, 30 years from now, looking back, what would you like to think of as your legacy?

FI Yeah, it's definitely that. It's so funny. Just as a side note, just yesterday, I was driving with Christo somewhere. I think we went to pick up a surfboard somewhere, and then I said-

LR - picking up surfboards.

FI I know. I said to him, "Hey, the only thing I would change right now in terms of personal life," and then I'll talk about legacy, "If I worked less, the only thing I would do more of is I would play more music and I would surf more."

LR Yeah.

FI His answer was, "Well, you can always do that," and it's true. It's about setting priorities. In terms of legacy, it's definitely, for me, about impacting people's lives positively. Not just that, but I have this whole vision in my head about creating ripple effects. I see this vision where if I can impact people, they can impact people, and then it's like a ripple effect. That's what I'm really thriving for and what makes me really happy, and I see this all the time at Basic Bananas. Someone comes in. You make a difference for them, and then they go and make a difference for other people. It's got this beautiful ripple effect.

LR That's amazing.

FI That's probably what I'm hoping to leave behind is these ripples of awesomeness.

LR Ripples of awesomeness.

FI Ripples of awesomeness.

LR #Ripplesof …

FI Yeah, #RipplesofAwesomeness.

LR Okay.

FI Exactly.

LR What do you want to learn next?

FI What do I want to learn next?

LR Mm-hmm (affirmative).

FI I want to learn to play the violin a little bit better.

LR No, you can't do that. If you're not five years old, I heard.

FI I'm actually doing it.

LR You're doing it?

FI But very badly. I'm taking lessons.

LR Awesome.

FI I'm not doing super well. I'm okay on instruments, but the violin is really just ...

LR Really hard.

FI Doing my head in.

LR It's doing your head in.

FI Our poor neighbors are probably struggling a little bit with that. I want to learn so many things. I just constantly learn things. I don't know.

LR Awesome.

FI I just do stuff all the time. I want to do a motorcycle trip through South America.

LR Oh, you just got your license.

FI I just got my license.

LR I saw that.

FI I know.

LR Congratulations.

FI A lot of people are very unhappy about that, but I promise that I will only drive safely.

LR That doesn't help, but I'm with you on that.

FI Yes, I want to learn that. I wanted to get my pilot license, so maybe you can actually give me some tips there. I did some lessons.

LR No. Don't take advice. That's the thing. Just get in there and go.

FI Just do it?

LR Yeah.

FI Okay.

LR Just get in and go.

FI Maybe I can use your plane to just get in and do it.

LR Yeah. Sure.

FI Okay. Cool. Sunday. Yeah. That's something else. I wanted to get my pilot license. I want to get better on the motorcycle. I want to play lots of instruments, still. I want to learn how to produce an album next year. We've got a band, so we want to record an album. Maybe I can learn a little bit which buttons to push and things like that.

LR Awesome.

FI Yeah. Entrepreneurship, there's always stuff to learn.

LR Always. Yeah.

FI Yeah.

LR You feel that learning ... All these other things that are not ... I feel like as entrepreneurs, we get so focused on our businesses that we spend all of our time reading business books or business blogs or whatever it is and all of our energy goes into getting our skills to the next level in that area, and a lot of us just stop learning other ... I don't think that anybody else on this show is going to say that "I'm learning the violin," for example.

FI No.

LR Do you feel like it helps in business to be learning things that are not-

FI It helps like nuts. I agree. When I first started the first business, I didn't take super seriously because I was still in advertising, so I had a lot of money come in. I was doing strategy. The second business, in the first year, I was exactly ... Actually, maybe not so much, but I was a little bit focused on just business, but I did make a promise to myself that I would never compromise on fun stuff, things that add fun to my life.

I can see how, when people get so focused, they forget to have fun and then suddenly, it becomes sad. I actually have read so many studies because I want to prove that it's true, so many studies about happiness. It's not that success comes in and then you're happy. Success comes because you are happy.

You create more success in your business, in your life when you're already happy, whereas most people take it the other way. They're like, "No, I'm just going to slave away. I'm going to read only books that I don't like and I'm only going to focus on this one thing, but then once I'll have success, I'll be happy," but actually, you have to almost flip it on the head.

You first have to focus on, "Hey, what makes me happy? I'll work maybe 10 hours a day," if you want, "Or eight, and then what else makes me happy? Is it going for a walk? Is it eating nice food? Is it playing the violin? What is it that makes me happy?"

LR Going for a surf. Yeah. Whatever it may be.

FI Definitely that. For me, even just playing music and doing creative things bring a lot of creativity into my business that I probably wouldn't have access to if I didn't do these activities.

LR Awesome. You have probably a unique perspective on this, since you work so closely with entrepreneurs. We call this thing MODERN ONTRAPRENEUR. What does it mean to you to be a modern entrepreneur?

FI Being a modern entrepreneur, I think, for me, means two things. One of them, a modern entrepreneur is really good at collaborating. They are the people that don't worry too much about competition, and they're not out there looking at competition and like, "How can I be better?" It's about "How can I collaborate?" At Basic Bananas, we actually collaborate pretty much with most of our competitors, and we don't worry about the rest.

LR Yeah.

FI I think a modern entrepreneur is someone who can collaborate and secondly, someone who can add value. Someone who is out there in the world finding a niche or finding a product or a service that somehow adds value.

LR Yeah

FI It doesn't have to be a charity. I don't believe in the charity model, but somehow, whatever they're doing adds value to the person that they're selling to. I think those two things make a modern entrepreneur.

LR Awesome. God, you're good at this. Would you please sign our wall?

FI I will sign your wall.

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