Thriving in the Age of Disruption

Building Products that Customers Love Taught Me How to Thrive in Career and Life: Amanda Ralph (Australia)

December 06, 2022 Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra & Ms. Amanda Ralph Season 1 Episode 27
Thriving in the Age of Disruption
Building Products that Customers Love Taught Me How to Thrive in Career and Life: Amanda Ralph (Australia)
Show Notes Transcript

Did you know that there's a product manager behind every move made by your favourite company? That there's a person, like That Product Chick Ms. Amanda Ralph, behind every new feature, every customer experience and every touch-point with the brand you love?

Dr. Ramesh meets one of Australasia's leading women in Product Management, Amanda - The irrepressible product strategist and leader with a passion for creating value by building products and services that customers love. Amanda also applies her insights in driving product success to her life - Finding joy in the ridiculous, battling crisis and empowering herself and others to come out stronger and wiser.

Come join Dr. Ramesh and Amanda in exploring an entrepreneurial mindset and a product manager's map to success.

To learn more about the entrepreneurial mindset with Dr. Ramesh, get your copy of The Big Jump into Entrepreneurship 2.0 on Amazon.com or www.Dr-Ramesh.com.

Host: Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra, Author, Podcast Host and Founder of Talent Leadership Crucible

Guest Speaker: Ms. Amanda Ralph,  Principal Product Manager at PaperCut Software; Co-Founder of Product Women Melbourne

#EntrepreneurialMindset #Melbourne #Australia #AmandaRalph #Dr.RameshRamachandra #TheBigJumpintoEntrepreneurship2.0 #CrisisReadyMindset #TalentLeadershipCrucible #Thriving #AgeofDisruption #CrisisResilience #ThatProductChick #ProductLeader #PaperCutSoftware #Brainmates #LeadingtheProduct #ProductWomenMelbourne #Founder

To learn more about the entrepreneurial mindset with Dr. Ramesh, get your copy of The Big Jump into Entrepreneurship 2.0 on Amazon.com or www.Dr-Ramesh.com.

Host: Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra, Author, Podcast Host and Founder of Talent Leadership Crucible

Guest Speaker: Ms. Amanda Ralph,  Principal Product Manager at PaperCut Software; Co-Founder of Product Women Melbourne

#EntrepreneurialMindset #Melbourne #Australia #AmandaRalph #Dr.RameshRamachandra #TheBigJumpintoEntrepreneurship2.0 #CrisisReadyMindset #TalentLeadershipCrucible #Thriving #AgeofDisruption #CrisisResilience #ThatProductChick #ProductLeader #PaperCutSoftware #Brainmates #LeadingtheProduct #ProductWomenMelbourne #Founder


Ho Lai Yun  00:04

Hello, and welcome to Thriving in the Age of Disruption. In today's episode, Dr. Ramesh heads down under to Australia for a heart-to-heart talk with Ms. Amanda Ralph, a product strategist and leader who's recognised as one of the region's leading women in product management. Amanda shares her passion for creating value by building products and services that customers love. She also applies the insights in driving product success to life, sharing with Dr. Ramesh how she finds joy in the ridiculous, overcomes crisis, and seeks to empower herself and to mentor others to come out stronger. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  00:42

Welcome to Thriving in the Age of Disruption podcast series. Amanda, you and I met almost 35 years ago, I'm so excited to have you here. I wanted to start off by having you introduce yourself.

Amanda Ralph  00:56

I'm a product professional, who loves exploring problems and finding value. I am a mum to two amazing young women who I'm really proud of. They're quite resilient and they've both faced different challenges with incredible courage. And they're both really compassionate young women, they're caring young women. So I feel like the world is a better place for them being in the world. I'm really proud of that. I'm your classic sandwich generation woman, I've got parents that are still pretty well and reasonably healthy, but who are ageing and who rely on me. They're physically and mentally very independent. But I'm there close by and make sure that they're doing well. I'm a wife to a husband who is facing some pretty serious health challenges. And that's taken a lot from me as well. Professionally, whilst I love doing product management, I love the chase of trying to find value and creating something from nothing. That's what motivates me, particularly in the last five to 10 years, I really have taken on a role of mentoring and helping women, in particular younger women in the organizations that I've been in, grow and drive their own development. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  02:12

So, it's the impact that you want to leave in the world out here.

Amanda Ralph  02:15

Yeah, I love that Madeleine Albright's quote "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women." And I really try and take that on as the mantra because I feel an obligation to help, support, coach, mentor, just be a psychological support, give a psychologically safe space for younger women to have vulnerable conversations about what they're struggling with, or where they want a little bit of guidance or insight. What's your experience been? What have you done? So I think for older women, we need to take that responsibility seriously, and try and help lift up those around us and help them progress through their career. I think for younger people who are earlier in their career, try and find your tribe, wherever you are, and your tribe might be within your organization, or it might be beyond your organization, something like Product Women, where you can come and have those conversations. But within your organization as well, there's bound to be people, and not just women. I've had some amazing male mentors who've really helped me in terms of my career decisions, but find those people that you can have those conversations with. And be courageous, and be a little bit more assertive in actually driving those conversations. So don't be afraid to sort of be quite deliberate or specific about the help that you want, or need, or the questions that you have. One of the things that I've been guilty of, and I think women are probably more guilty of is they are a little bit hesitant sometimes. Just to be quite deliberate. You can do it in a nice way. But in a way that makes it very clear what it is that you're asking for and what it is that you're seeking guidance on.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  03:57

That's really great advice. Thank you for that. Amanda. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  04:04

You've changed jobs from the time I saw you last in Melbourne.

Amanda Ralph  04:09

Yeah, I was in First State Super, I think. I was there for just under four years. And then I moved from there to Qantas. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  04:16

Yes. 

Amanda Ralph  04:17

Yeah. I loved working at Qantas. I was at Qantas hotel, Qantas holidays, working in a full-stack technology, business running a team of product managers. And I loved that. And then a thing called Covid happened and it was just really challenging to be in the travel sector when all of that was happening. I was really fortunate. I wasn't stood down. But I was one of probably out of 30,000 employees, there was only about 2,000 of us that weren't stood down. So there was a little bit of guilt as well as I watched all of my colleagues, including my cousin, actually, who has been a pilot with Qantas for over 20 years just progressively gets stood down. And it was It's pretty stressful. I had a very good boss and she was really supportive and amazing. But with everything that was happening and the uncertainty around it all, I then had the opportunity to go to AustralianSuper and work in as their retirement way and drive the strategy around retirement. I think Ramesh, you know that the other context. Whilst all of this was happening, Moses, my husband got diagnosed with quite advanced and aggressive melanoma. He got diagnosed in the midst of lockdown in July 2020 with stage-four melanoma. And when he got diagnosed, we were kind of told he had about three months to live if the treatment was not successful. So that was all going on. Thankfully, he's responded really, really well to treatment. And he's now technically in remission. But that in itself has been a whole journey that's been happening throughout the last two years that made some of the decisions quite tough. It was what drove some of my career decisions as well.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  06:01

That's right. 

Amanda Ralph  06:02

And similarly, last year in January, my mother was very, very ill. And she nearly died so she was eight weeks in hospital, including a couple of weeks in the ICU. Those critical moments make you re-evaluate and reassess what's important in your life and where your focus should be. So I was at AustralianSuper. And I was brought in there with a very clear remit around defining the retirement strategy for the business and for the membership. I started to do that and did that very well. Then we had a change in leadership. And none of the work of our team got funded or prioritised. And essentially, we lost our entire leadership team. And the day I resigned, a colleague of mine who had been there for 17 years also resigned. So it was kind of bittersweet but I guess one of the things I've learned is that I'm probably much less tolerant now than I was previously in terms of a toxic environment or bad leadership. If I can't turn it around, then I'm much less likely than I was early in my career to just kind of ride it through. And I found this job, I'm loving it already. Did a lot of due diligence about the culture, about the person that I'm reporting to. He's very different to me, he's got engineering background. He's exceptionally smart, but he's a real straight talker. He has the back of his team. He supports, he lifts his team up rather than trying to, I don't know, not empower. My boss from Qantas. She's left Qantas as well. She was really helpful in supporting and helping me think through my decision and work out what's the right decision for me. It was great having her help me. She knows me. I've reported to her. She knows my strengths, my challenges. She knows what motivates me. So it was good to have her as a sounding board to talk through that.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  07:56

She's also sort of pseudo mentor in some ways, right? Having been your boss. 

Amanda Ralph  08:01

Yeah, just in that way. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  08:02

Well, where do you work now then?

Amanda Ralph  08:03

I work for a software company called PaperCut. We work in print management software. We're a global company. We're headquartered in Melbourne, but we've got offices in London and in Portland, Oregon, as well as small satellite offices in Singapore, Berlin, New Zealand. We have about 12% of the global print management market globally.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  08:24

Wow, that's neat. Is it a B2B business? 

Amanda Ralph  08:27

It's primarily B2B. An interesting channel model, which I'm sort of working my way through this. The main channels are reseller models. So our client base is actually multifaceted. But the printer manufacturers, so the likes of Fuji, Xerox, and Canon and all of those big manufacturers, and then the reseller network, so the Managed Print Service Providers, Managed Network Providers who then go into big institutions. We're pretty diverse, but we've got big verticals, in healthcare, in education, in government in particular, and the founders are still heading up the company, our two founders - from Monash actually, Ramesh. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  09:07

Really? 

Amanda Ralph  09:08

Yeah, they're a bit later than me. There are probably about four or five years behind me. And they met at Monash. Main co-founder, a guy called Chris Dance was working part-time as a system administrator for a local school and saw this gap in terms of ability to manage print. He and Matt the other co-founder, built this in the garage, basically the software. And then they ran it sort of as a side hat for about five years. They had other jobs and they ran this business and then they started up and it started to make more money than their day jobs. So they gave up their day jobs and invested all their time in this. Yeah, it's a really interesting, quite complex space. A lot more complex than I thought it would be from a product perspective. Essentially, my job will be working across and leading teams of engineers and product managers and design specialists in building software. Primarily my focus is going based around SaaS and Cloud Software. Product management is all about exploring problem space. So problem exploration, and then coming up with innovative solutions to solve for those problems and needs. So in this case, from a product management perspective for these different organisations, where is the need? Where is the problem that they need to solve for? It doesn't sound complex, but when you start to unpack it is complex. Because if you think about a big institution, like Harvard, for example, and they've got different print requirements in terms of different formats, they've got thousands of printers across hundreds of sites, buildings, they want to be able to charge for some printing to restrict printing, track printing, 3D printing, large format printing. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  10:47

More recently, there is also the sustainability focus. So how do you actually minimise printing?

Amanda Ralph  10:54

Correct. And that's one of the things that's differentiated our products from the get-go is that has a big focus on sustainability, and managing print waste. We've got a new product, which is Forest Positive, which allows our clients to also then basically plant renewable forestry as part of their print package with us. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  11:15

Oh, nice. 

Amanda Ralph  11:17

Moving Beyond print workflow, what is printing today? There's a lot of different kinds of printing as well, starting to roll 3D printing and different opportunities. So I'm really learning a lot. A bit exhausted because you just in that phase, where it's just information. To your question, Ramesh, whilst I've skewed towards financial services, I've been in different sectors. I've been in health care or travel, banking, superannuation. For product activities, it really is all about exploring the problems space and finding and creating value. So where is the value? Value to you as a business and value to your customers, and you get that business value by demonstrating and providing value to your customers - Value that somebody else hasn't provided or providing them with more value than your competitor set, for example.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  12:10

That's an interesting point that I wanted to explore with you because I typically interview our guests on their entrepreneurial mindset. And I define an entrepreneurial mindset as someone who's being resourceful in life, in looking at problems and how to solve them, as well as knowing and managing the risk and uncertainty around whatever they are dealing with. So that ultimately, they can create value. When you define what you do with product management and innovation, which is essentially exploring the problem space and creating value, I think you're somebody who has an entrepreneurial mindset.

Amanda Ralph  12:48

Yeah, I don't know how you can be a good product manager and not have a different sort of dimensions and you can do product in a start-up sense. Or you can do product, you know, established large scale enterprise. Each of those models brings different challenges with them. But regardless of whether you're in a start-up, or you're in a more established corporate environment, to be good at product, you have to be curious, you have to make and risk trade-offs, and have that mindset of exploring and unpacking a problem and finding - I call it the "nugget of gold", like what's the nugget of gold that exists in that problem space, that is going to create value for you and for your customers.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  13:28

Thank you so much for unpacking that for us. So, have you ever been interested to start your own business since you obviously have that acumen? 

Amanda Ralph  13:39

Yeah, I've thought about it. But that I think probably in terms of life, I am the anchor in my family, like I'm the income provider for my family and I probably needed to have a bit more certainty and stability in that sense. So I haven't taken the leap and founded my own business. That said, I've founded a group called Product Women, which now has over 7,000. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  14:03

Oh, wow. 

Amanda Ralph  14:04

Yeah. That's a great community of women talking about product. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  14:08

Right. So can you share more on how you got around to creating that?

Amanda Ralph  14:14

Yeah, so I co-founded with two other women. One woman who is a business owner, she runs a product management training business called Brainmates, Adrienne Tan. She's based out of Sydney and another lady called Laura Cardinal. We were at Adrienne's house, we were talking and planning a big conference that we run called Leading the Product, we were having a bit of a whinge actually over a bottle of wine about the fact that a lot of the conversations in product management were sort of driven by men, dominated by a certain persona, and that we didn't feel like the things that we wanted to talk about, or we didn't feel that our voice was being heard. And so it started off as a little bit of a whinge fest. And then we decided, well, there's sort of two choices right? We could just whinge about it and feel upset and dissatisfied with that. Or we can actually take control and do something about this. So from there, Product Women was born.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  15:10

Oh, wow. 

Amanda Ralph  15:10

And we set up sort of two main locations Melbourne and Sydney, initially. It's changed that a bit. It's now moved to online, and that's been good in one sense because we've captured an audience that's more diverse and more distributed geographically. By pre-Covid, we've started trialling a lot of things like running breakfast sessions, because most of the meet-ups run after work. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  15:33

Yes. 

Amanda Ralph  15:34

And a lot of women found that really challenging to have the space and time to go to something after five. So we started trialling a few things like lunchtimes, or morning meet-ups, which was really good. We also did a bit of a rebrand. And we were very deliberate in our rebranding to have quite a diverse physical representation of our membership. And that was interesting as well, we started to see that that triggered a whole new cohort of members who started coming to our meet-ups. If you look at our branding, we've got women in burkas, women in hijabs, women with green hair, women with light skin, dark skin, curly hair, red hair, just trying to be more representative of our community. We started to see a lot more younger women, and also a lot of women who started to attend and participate in our community if you were migrant women. And I have a really hard, you know, I love Australia, I think it's an amazing place. And Ramesh, you've lived here so you probably have a sense of the fabulous things about Australia. But Australia is also quite parochial, and there's a degree of racism and a degree in bias. And so people who are coming in from other countries to start their career here, even people who can be quite experienced or quite well qualified, they often really find it very difficult to break in and get that first kind of opportunity. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  17:00

Right. 

Amanda Ralph  17:01

And we started to see that in the membership that we had coming in. And it was good, because it gave us an opportunity to have some very trusted and open conversations and support each other in how to overcome that challenge.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  17:15

Right. So you've been running this group for about four years now.

Amanda Ralph  17:19

Yeah, I think it's maybe a bit longer now. Maybe five and a half. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  17:22

Oh, wow. And it's amazing the kind of success that you've had for what I would call as a movement and a social enterprise. So it's not formally designed to be a company to sustain that, to get the resources, and to keep people engaged in the conversation with it being almost like a volunteer job, right? 

Amanda Ralph  17:44

Yes. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  17:45

How did you the three founders putting in your time and effort to sustaining this over the last five and a half years? 

Amanda Ralph  17:51

We've been really lucky, we built it out. And we were deliberate in building out a community of really young and connected women who just roll their sleeves up and get in there and sort of take ownership of things. It's not dependent on any one person. We've been quite deliberate in that to make sure that it's a sort of distributed model. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  18:11

Does it mean that you applied your product management and innovation strategies in building this business? 

Amanda Ralph  18:18

Yeah, a little bit, actually. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  18:20

Yeah, share with us a little bit more. If I knew that there was a specific way in which I could design my business so that it could be sustainable, it has me interested. 

Amanda Ralph  18:31

It was getting developing and enabling a group of people who are passionate about product management and having a voice for women. We're not exclusive to women. We have some male speakers, we have men participating in our sessions. But it's about us setting the agenda and talking about the things that we want to talk about and explore the topics we want to explore. We've basically set it up so that there's a network of Product Women leads who separately go out and recruit, they talk to our membership, they find out what are the things they want to hear about and learn about. And then they go out with our early days, we were much more hands-on and having to help connect them but they go out, reach out, get speakers and bring them in. We provided all that infrastructure in terms of Meetup platforms, and Zoom, and we've got sponsors who provide us with physical locations as well when we do physical meet-up.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  19:25

I think it's very inspiring that the three of you got together and created something, which is really impactful for something that you believe strongly in, which is to give a voice to women in product management and innovation space, and to actually use the methodology so that you created a network which is sustainable.

Amanda Ralph  19:48

Yeah, it's been great. I find it personally quite energising as well to see all these really smart young women who are probably much smarter than I was at their age, if I'm really honest with you. That gives me great hope for the future. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  20:01

Wonderful.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  20:07

The next topic is all about crisis or setbacks in life. You spoke a little bit about it earlier on. But what we are interested to decode for our listeners is how our guest speakers deal with setbacks in life. Is there a setback that was very defining for you? And how did you deal with that?

Amanda Ralph  20:25

Well, I think my husband's health has been a major intersection in more recent time in my life,. You know, it's pretty confronting as a family in one sense, I'm the glue that keeps my family together. It's a crisis of many dimensions, because you confronted with a reality, which is, this person that you love may actually die. In the case of my husband, it was brutal. We were told 10 to 12 weeks, right, which is not a long time at all. And then you're also, at the same time, facing into a financial crisis. It's a terrible conversation to have, but it's a terrible thing to have to think. But it's like, "Oh how much is this gonna cost? Like, am I talking $50,000? And we're talking $250,000? What am I dealing with here?" And then thinking about how do you manage that. Now we've been really exceptionally fortunate because there's a thing here called the PBS, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. And his treatment was put onto that scheme, six months before he was diagnosed. His treatment is $8,000 a cycle. And initially, it was every three weeks, and now it's every month, and we're on cycle 20 something. But because he's been on the PBS, it's been funded through our government and our private health care. So we've been exceptionally fortunate. That's been one crisis. 

Amanda Ralph  21:40

I think, professionally, when I came back from Fiji, and was trying to make my way in Australia. Ironically, I was on the receiving end of some of that parochialism. Australian business is not necessarily valuing international experience. And I hope that's changed in the last 15 to 20 years. But when I first came back, I thought is it just because my experience was in Fiji. And then I connected with people who had come back from London, from Singapore, or from other parts of the world. And they were having a not dissimilar experience to me, in terms of lack of real understanding and value of that experience outside of Australia and what that actually brings. And so I had to really work hard to rebuild and establish myself back in Australia. It's kind of ironic, because I almost feel that flip side of that is when I worked for Colonial First State in Fiji, and also the big telecommunications company. And I did some really amazing and really innovative things, like I launched Internet services in three languages, across incredibly diverse literacy group for people who were not just technically illiterate, but quite genuinely illiterate to very, very high net worth, corporate enterprise businesses. So the diversity of customer base that I launched that product and service, in Hindi, Fiji, and in English, three languages. And you do all of that on very, very narrow budgets, very, very narrow resource profiles, and you become very resourceful. I did some fabulous things when I was at Colonial First State, during terms of rebuild a business bank and getting a business banking license from the ground up, which was a fantastic thing to be part of. But you come back here, and I don't think there's really an appreciation of the breadth and the resourcefulness that goes with some of those environments. So re-establishing myself here was a bit of a crisis of career and crisis of confidence, I guess, which I've worked my way through. In the midst of that I've had a couple of spectacular failures, you know, not looking after myself mentally, not looking after myself, professionally. And that has a cascade effect on your family has an effect on the people that work with you or report to you. And I guess I've learned the hard way through that. I'm much more balanced now, in terms of my work-life balance. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  24:02

What I learned from this conversation about dealing with setbacks is that you called out a couple of key things. And one of it was having this sense of gratitude for how life shows up, especially with this most recent medical crisis. If you're open enough, the opportunities will show up. And in this case, having it be funded by, is it a kind of insurance? 

Amanda Ralph  24:27

It's the combination of the government Medicare, and then we've got private health insurance as well.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  24:31

Right. Yeah. And so being present and being grateful for that, right. So that's one piece. And the experience of having to come back and rebuild your career in Australia, having spent some time out in Fiji was you to took on working hard and that's become your success formula as well. Because you don't have a problem in rolling up your sleeves even though you've done these great and amazing things in Fiji before, in which you were really resourceful in terms of how you had pulled off the work with Telecom Fiji, but you've also developed the skill to be someone who is a quick study. That means taking what applies in a previous situation, adapting it, and using it for a new situation. And last of all, learning that over time, you could figure out your own life balance with career, and with taking care of yourself. Because if you didn't, there was going to be damage to yourself and to the people that you care about. Thank you for calling out these things. Because it is an important piece of managing a crisis, and being able to come out stronger from a crisis. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  25:49

I wanted to ask you what spirituality is for you, and where are you in your spiritual journey.

Amanda Ralph  25:54

I'm not a religious person. But as I've aged and got more experience in my life, I'm definitely more spiritual in terms of being connected - Connected to people, my community, and to myself. I am more comfortable in myself, including my flaws, a bit more accepting of myself, and also much more focused on the spiritual part of my life, not so focused on material things so much as being focused on connectedness - Connecting with friends, connecting with family, having meaningful conversations, and interactions. And I think Covid has made that even more precious and even more challenging, particularly for us here in Melbourne, where we've had the longest lockdown twice in our lockdown experience. We had very, very harsh restrictions, five kilometre radius boundaries, only allowed out of your house for an hour a day for months on end, which made that connection even harder, and meant we had to be a little bit more innovative in terms of how we then connected with friends and family.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  27:01

That's right, you think that it's possible for us to live a simple life in today's world? 

Amanda Ralph  27:05

But think it's challenging. It's kind of a dichotomy of that connectedness, because I'm trying to connect with the people I love and the people that I value in my community at a more sort of base level, making it a meaningful connection. In one sense, that's hard to do, particularly with the noise of all of the technology, platforms, information and connection that's kind of now part of that everyday life. I'm like all of us, I am always on my phone. And I'm trying to have moments of not looking at my phone or not having my phone with me, and not actually connecting on those things. In fact, my daughter, my youngest was having a really hard time. She's a frontline health care worker. And it's been just so deeply tough. And so she and I went away for a week. And I deliberately picked somewhere where the Wi-Fi connection signal was pretty bad. She sort of had to walk out onto the top of the hill to get connection. And we went on a farm with some alpacas and sheep, it was really nice to just disconnect all of that technology. I think where it's hard in terms of a simple life is that all of that information and social connection, they make it easy to fall into a pattern or a way of comparing yourself to others. And failing have I achieved what other people have achieved? That's an easy trap to fall into. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  28:28

Yeah, that's so true. The comparison. Often if we were left to ourselves, we'll be happy with what we have. But the danger is always that when you compare yourself with others, then you fall into the trap of, "Oh my god, have I done enough?" 

Amanda Ralph  28:44

Yeah. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  28:45

I mean, when you look back at your life, and you spent almost 10 years in Fiji. When you got married, did you find that people in Fiji lived a simpler life?

Amanda Ralph  28:53

Yeah, we really, really miss that. We go to the village and everything slows down. And it is just a focus of spending time together and having deep conversations. That's the thing I really miss. There's a girl I'm following on YouTube at the moment. She's the Korean woman cycling her way through the South Pacific. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  29:10

Oh, wow.

Amanda Ralph  29:11

She's in Fiji, at the moment, I'm not sure if she's still there, but she's had this video she posted. She's just riding her bike and it was just such a Fijian experience. She ends up buying a bunch of bananas and then they invite her into the village and then she has this whole adventure during the day. Time just slows down and she goes from riding a bike to having these amazing experiences and then ultimately pitching her tent in their front yard, staying overnight, and again, connecting. It epitomizes the thing that's so great in Fiji, is that people materially don't have a lot, but what they have they share and they share themselves. They're just very giving of themselves. And it's really lovely. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  29:52

Yeah, it is. What would be three key things that represent 'Thriving' for you? 

Amanda Ralph  29:57

I know when I'm thriving, I'm not I'm making comparisons. I'm not comparing myself to others. That's kind of a bit of a test. Am I happy and comfortable in where I'm at? That I'm laughing a lot. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  30:10

That's right. 

Amanda Ralph  30:11

Yeah. Because I have a very keen sense of humour. And I do find joy in the ridiculous. And if I'm not finding joy in the ridiculous, that's probably an indication when I'm not thriving. And I think just generally feeling present, feeling connected.

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  30:27

That's nice. Amanda, you and I met almost 35 years ago. 

Amanda Ralph  30:32

Yes, I told mom and dad today. I said, I'm catching up with Ramesh later on, and tell them what we are doing and they said, "Oh, Ramesh! We love her so much. And please say hello to her, tell her we send her our love."

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  30:44

Please send them back my love and a hug as well. It was in the early 90s. And Australia was a very different place. And I loved just hanging out with you, Mo, and Tanya. And it was a lifetime ago. But those memories are still fresh in my mind and they were part of my character building. So I'm really excited that we could catch up today because it reminded me of those carefree days when I was looking into the future, imagining who I would become. 

Amanda Ralph  31:15

It was a great time. One of the things I really value with my parents is neither of them were globalised,  and they both come from pretty sort of middle-class, you know, Anglo Australian backgrounds. But both of them were quite, I guess, ahead of their time. It's kind of laughable. But in the 70s, some of my friends at primary schools couldn't believe that we ate Chinese food. "You eat Chinese food?” Like, "Wow, you're really out there. Your family's out there."

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  31:40

"You're progressive."

Amanda Ralph  31:41

And Mum and Dad sort of tried to expose us to different things, different cultures, and people. And then when I got to uni when I left home and I was living on campus, just meeting all those people you mentioned and all of their backstories and their backgrounds. It just sort of expanded my worldview and my horizon about what was out there. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  32:01

Okay, wonderful. Thank you for having this discussion with us. Amanda, I think we had a very authentic conversation. 

Amanda Ralph  32:08

Thanks, Ramesh. Thanks so much. 

Dr. Ramesh Ramachandra  32:09

Thank you.

Ho Lai Yun  32:10

Thank you, Dr. Ramesh and Amanda. We hope you've enjoyed exploring the entrepreneurial mindset and this product managers map to success in work and in life. If you're interested to learn more about how to start or to improve on your entrepreneurial endeavours. Check out Dr. Ramesh's book "The Big Jump into Entrepreneurship 2.0" for her top tips, simply click on the Amazon link provided in the podcast description. 

Ho Lai Yun  32:35

Next up, Dr. Ramesh hops over to Thailand to explore the intricacies of working in a successful family business and balancing that with entrepreneurship ambitions to build one's own business. We'll be meeting with Mr. Daron Hongsananda, Founder of Koze Furniture and whose family owns Gaysorn Property, one of Thailand's leading players in the commercial, retail and residential property space. Thank you for joining us today. And be sure to follow Dr. Ramesh on LinkedIn so that you'll be alerted every time our new podcast episode comes out on Thriving in the Age of Disruption.

Bio
Amanda Ralph
Principal Product Manager, PaperCut Software;
Product Management Trainer, Brainmates;
Leading the Product Ambassador, Leading the Product;
Co-Founder, Product Women Melbourne; 
That Product Chick

Amanda is a successful product strategist and leader with a passion for creating sustainable commercial and customer value through building and designing products and services that customers love. 

Extensive experience in managing complex product and service portfolios (including legacy portfolio optimisation) across a range of sectors, including financial services, health, higher education, telecommunications, professional services and travel. 

Purpose driven, Amanda values diversity of skills and perspectives and gains personal satisfaction in helping people grow and achieve to the best of their potential. She has led multi-disciplinary teams of up to 22 people (within Australia and internationally). She is a member of the Association of Product Professionals Empower Council. 

As an active member of the Australian and global product community, she regularly speaks and publishes on product management leadership and best practice. In 2017 she was recognised as one of 17 Leading Women in Product Management (Australasia). In 2022 she was recognised by productboard as one of 25 inspirational women in product leaders.