It’s time to be a Try Hard
I grew up in Australia; a land of mates, rolling up your sleeves, and being lauded for being an ideas man (or woman). A country with plenty of room to pursue your hobbies in the backyard, and a willingness for strangers to lend a hand when you were down and out.
A place where dodgy might be fine for a late night kebab, but not for the important work like building a hospital or the quality of a relationship. A place of social consciousness, even if it sometimes delved into being a bit of a nanny state.
Despite golden beaches, work/life balance, and an allergy to bullshit, the Australian way of life couldn’t contain my career ambitions and wanderlust.
In 2011, I sold my boutique creative agencies for a song and moved to San Francisco, the mecca of tech — without a job or plan other than, ‘figure it out when you get there.’ I didn’t know what I wanted to pursue or what I was going to do. I was just burned out and needed a change.
Over the next couple of years, I became a head of UX at a global design agency, mentored at startup incubators, made plenty of ridiculously smart startup friends, and developed a successful design consulting business for Fortune 500s and startups. I also met my fiancé, renovated our house, started writing a book, and became sought after in my field.
So what’s the problem?
You see, I miss home. I love America for many many reasons, but I’m an Aussie at heart, and it’s hard to ignore the call of the beach, the wafting scent of a meat pie, or the twang of a drunk bogan just ‘waiting for a mate.’ Perhaps I miss the Aussie sense of humour the most.
Even though my family always ask when I plan to return home, I often ask myself, what would I do if and when I go?
When running my small agency in Brisbane, I often used to feel a giant sense of insignificance and fear that we were kidding ourselves trying to take on the world. I stressed over customer experience, documentation, and process not to be the best, but because I didn’t want to be the worst. I was young and got a lot wrong, but also felt very alone along the way. I was surrounded by well-meaning people who loved and supported me, but who had no idea about technology and lacked the experience and understanding of the digital industry.
It was the wild west; every man for himself — and I was a complete rookie with a toy gun. It’s amazing how quickly you can diminish yourself when you put others on a pedestal.
When I moved to America, I was immediately surrounded by people who didn’t talk about the merits of having a website for their business, but rather were intensely focussing on how they planned to influence and change the way society interacted with each other, whether via healthcare, education, communication, or artificial intelligence. It was an entirely different level of the game; one that was hard to communicate to friends and family back home.
At first, I was enamored and constantly compared Australia with America. I quickly believed I had backed the right horse, but it would take a couple of years of being immersed on the playing field with some of the best and brightest here to recognize some key things that would shift my thinking.
What I learned after I took the beer goggles off:
- There are some truly brilliant people here surrounded by many many average ones
- Big talk and ambition doesn’t mean quality and sustainable execution
- Practicality of the idea often takes a back seat to the dream of a pay day
- There is a lot of showmanship hiding fear, tears, struggle, depression and loneliness
- There is an inherent blindness due to a lack of life experience and/or exposure to the full context of the problem
- Disruption has become a formulaic approach which is susceptible to functional fixedness, hence why everyone is making Uber for X.
- There can be an extreme monoculture with plenty of Kool Aid which creates many blindspots (read: opportunities for competitors)
- These are normal people with insecurities, hopes, dreams, loveless relationships, family issues, health issues. They are not supernatural; they’re just really good at pretending things are fine.
I’ve traveled home many times over the years and have been enthused to see the progress and activity taking place in the startup community. It was inevitable that people from across the world would visit the Bay Area and seek to recreate the scene in their local communities.
Alas, what has often disappointed me was the desire to build a Silicon X in their city, under the false belief that American startup culture is easily transplantable — and the best thing for their country.
The Aussie way of life is Australia’s biggest advantage.
The Australian way of life is uniquely valuable in its own right. You only have to see the confusion on people’s faces here when I talk about hitting the piss at a Sundy arvo barbie to reminded that we are not the same, despite our similarities in consumption culture.
While American startup culture (despite its glaring flaws) has some powerful and distinct characteristics, I believe that Australia too has just as many in their own right — but we are failing to fully embrace them, such as:
Australians live and die by the code of mate-ship. The idea of leveraging others for personal gain might be relegated to some greedy dickheads in the city, but as a wider culture, we don’t treat others as pawns or seek friendship purely because it serves our agenda. We like people for the content of their character over their job title or how much cash they have. I feel this is because there’s a much bigger respect for the social cost of screwing people in Australia than there is in the US.
Australians are incredibly practical and pragmatic. We use what we have at hand, tend not to waste stuff (living perpetually in drought tends to shape that), and deal with everyday problems with our infamous ‘no worries’ attitude. While this can be frustrating and seemingly short-sighted for those who want to shoot for the moon, a culture of daily practice and iteration can lead to better inventions than those tasked only to innovate.
Australians are very resourceful. I’ve learned time and time again that resources aren’t typically the decider of a battle — it’s resourcefulness. Perhaps being starved of ‘smart’ large venture capital has been a short term detriment, but it’s caused invention and workarounds that many of my American counterparts here simply haven’t and wouldn’t consider. You see, step two in American startup land (after coming up with the idea) is to go raise a bajillion dollars to spend on world domination. That can be a big achilles heel.
Australians love to back the underdog. We love the guy or girl who faces stupid odds, and may even lose — provided they gave it everything with a humble smile on their face. It’s even better though when they win and we all feel part of the victory. Aussies don’t tolerate cockiness though. While it ensures a level of humility that can seem noticeably absent in American culture, it can also stifle people’s confidence and courage to fully spread their wings and dust themselves off to try again.
Australians have free healthcare, affordable education, and quality infrastructure. Every Aussie moans and bitches about how crap Australian social services are at some point. All I can say is, move to America with a serious pre-existing health condition then talk to me about problems. There’s always room for improvement — hence why we need to foster a culture of problem solvers who want to put their money where their mouth is, but it’s important that Australians realise just how good they have it compared to basically every other place in the world which provides a foundation that most Americans cannot even comprehend.
What happens if we don’t embrace a bigger perspective?
Australia is not all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows either. There are plenty of reasons to leave Australia to pursue a bolder career as cited by numerous expats. The most common being cited as tall poppy syndrome, short-sighted thinking, and hyper-conservatism, leading to limited/no innovation, limited impact, and the inability to achieve the level of returns possible in other markets. Are they correct? Yes and no. There is an element of how we want to look at it.
The benefit of Australian risk takers and entrepreneurs leaving the country means that they can go to the source of their industry rather than drink from the tap. Furthermore, those who remain don’t have to deal with all the failed entrepreneurs being harassed on A Current Affair while complex industries are dumbed down to ‘tech whiz kids’ and ‘shonky con-men’. I’m kidding, but not really.
The downside is that we create a massive brain drain of people who will create businesses, invent, employ, and change and improve the way of doing things at large scale. Talent who remain can get wasted in jobs below their potential, and communities miss out on the benefits of significant investment, people planting roots, and a population with disposable cash-flow.
We lose the minds who will cure disease, create the next generation of technology, or reshape commerce, education, and healthcare. Instead, Australia gets left with those taking smaller risks (or none at all). While small businesses are extremely important, they are under constant threat, and they just aren’t enough operating at the required level of the game to support the new economy of work.
For example, while Australians were so consumed with Uber and taxi companies, most failed to even recognise that Uber wasn’t even a competing cab company, but an AI logistics company. They were protesting and being angry for what was right in front of them, yet not able to see that rapidly approaching shift on the horizon. The business model, technology, strategy, and vision of Uber wasn’t just lost on most Australian people, it wasn’t even in their psyche. We are being blindsided because we have been taught to be too cautious.
There isn’t anyone to blame per se. Rather, to spark a conversation about our culture, and to choose whether we want to be defined as battlers who exist to just survive, or try hards who give it a crack even if it’s seemingly impossible.
By avoiding the work and opportunity to innovate on our own terms, Uber targeted Australia as a ripe opportunity, and has taken both the cake and the tin. While progress is inevitable, the role Australia and Australians play in their own destiny is still within their hands — but it would require a slight shift in the larger culture from the modern definition of the poor Aussie Battler, to the original Aussie Try Hard.
We have a strong track record of punching above our weight
You see, Australians are not unfamiliar with leading the world, inventing things, and changing the way things work. We’re a very creative bunch who have already made a significant global contribution, so why is more air time given to those in business acting immorally than those who are good people, taking big risks, and leading the way?
From the black box flight recorder, the pacemaker, Google maps, polymer bank notes, the electric drill, wifi, cervical cancer vaccination, ultrasounds and many more, Aussies have been punching above their weight since it was founded. These are all Aussie inventions! It’s time we taught business and entrepreneurship at a cultural level as something to use our Aussie grit toward, rather that to fear the ridicule and judgement of failure by our peers.
My assertion is that for all these brilliant world-changing (and valuable) inventions, there still remains a culture that sees many of these inventors needing to look abroad for support, investment, mentoring, and the means to grow their idea into a business. Not because there are a lack of resources at home, but because the culture of being an entrepreneur is more akin to being a predatory shonkster without a serious job than an ambitious ideas man (or woman).
Every culture has its pros and cons; America is hardly trouble-free. However, it’s up to us to decide which environment we want to create. Do we wish to be defined by tall-poppy syndrome, or is it an opportunity to lean into our culture and work to evolve our collective understanding and relationship with risk-taking?
Rather than vilify or shun risk-takers, what if there was more structure to teach and inspire smart risk-taking, and fostering a culture of big ideas done the Australian way? We back our kids to go out and do their best despite the odds, so when did we shift gears and start promoting the fear of failure?
You see, living in America has shown me that for all the proud spirit of domination, boldness, bravery, and courage in the fact of insurmountable challenges, there’s also a lot of fear, dogma, and ignorance that can overpower the discourse. It’s a universal human condition. Ambitious Australians (including me) must not be fooled into a sense of insecurity simply because America brands themselves better. It’s time to stop looking over the fence, and start fostering the unique talent we have in front of us.
The key is not to make either culture wrong, or to ignore or excuse the negative attributes. Nor is it to homogenize and make everything all nice and same-samey. Australia and America are clearly different cultures, that produce different thinking, and a different way of life. This is a good thing.
It’s because of these differences that I believe Australia and Australians should focus less on trying to emulate Silicon Valley, and rather take on the world doing what Australians do best — valuing mate-ship, being practical and pragmatic, being very very resourceful, and backing the underdog.
We start by looking at ways to shift the conversation around something we already love to do — punt. I propose that we as a society aim to identify less as a Hard Aussie Battler, and more to being a Try Hard.
Since when was trying hard ever a negative thing? It’s always the underdog who upsets the apple cart, and we love it when they do.
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