An extreme adventurer who makes a difference
Ryan Stramrood owns Stramrood Connect Media Brokerage and is a partner in Ryan Stramrood Swimming and Speaking. He tells Margaret Harris how his extreme ice swimming led him to motivational speaking
WHAT does being a motivational speaker involve?
Fundamentally, it requires a genuine mindset and way of thinking; one that is not commercially contrived, but rather is based on real experiences, real actions and your own life. You need to live it before you can speak it.
What are the four most important tasks you do as part of your job?
1. As I run an advertising sales business and a speaking business, the most important thing I do is to ensure the two complement each other and synergise. My speaking opens significant doors in advertising sales and vice versa.
2. To be chosen to be a keynote speaker at many corporate events, one has to rise above significant competition. An important daily task is positive public relations around my brand and looking for opportunities.
3. Walk the talk. I am an extreme adventurer and swimmer. I spend a lot of time planning, raising funds or sponsorships and training. This all needs to synchronise with our medium- and longterm business objectives; swimming challenges have been converted into business opportunities.
4. Give back. It is vital that I use the platform I created to give back to where my heart and passions lie — to the ocean, everything in it and to those less fortunate than me, primarily children. Genuine charity work provides great public relations opportunities and is an important part of our business.
How did you end up doing this type of work?
The advertising sales business was bought from my brilliant dad, Clive Stramrood, and then grown to where it is today. We love the philosophy and psychology of sales, so bringing strategy, intellect and creativity into media sales has stood us in good stead over the past 17 years. I studied a bachelor of economics degree at Stellenbosch University and majored in marketing.
The speaking business has been a wonderful journey. I am an extreme swimmer and have travelled the world, setting different challenges, sometimes extremely difficult and dangerous. For deeply personal reasons, I have been pushing and challenging firstly my own boundaries and limits and eventually the limits of mankind.
Each time I have undertaken a challenge, I have learnt so much about myself, my mind, my world, my limits and how our minds are defaulted to keep us rooted inside our comfort zones and to never test ourselves further.
Two years ago, my sister and now manager, Gill Attwood, persuaded me to share my story. We secured our first booking with SalesGuru in 2014 which was such a hit that the business took on a life of its own from there.
What do you most enjoy about your work?
I get to combine my day-to-day sales job with inspirational speaking, interacting on all levels with many companies around the country and the world. I get to see so many people walk away from my talks with a genuinely new outlook on all aspects of their lives, including their careers; a new level of goal-setting and way to reach it. It still blows me away that my simple story has this ability, but I’ve seen enough to believe completely and have honed the skill. My newfound ability to influence people towards doing good for others less fortunate is beyond rewarding.
And what do you find challenging?
In advertising sales, a plethora of digital advertising opportunities and the extreme pace at which they arise and change to provide alternative advertising platforms have kept us on our toes. But in chaos lies great opportunity.
A big challenge on the speaking front is the effort, expense and strategy required to remain current and to be noticed. It’s useless being on a recommended speakers list for a corporate event if your name and ethos are not known to that decision-maker — you’ll simply be scratched off the list. An ongoing effort to remain in the public eye, often needing to blow one’s own trumpet sometimes goes against the grain for me. Fortunately there is a (possibly morbid) public fascination around what I do when I am undertaking an icy or extreme challenge. But it remains a challenge.
What did you want to be when you were a child?
I definitely did not dream of becoming an extreme ice swimmer or public speaker. I always wanted to do something different, to be able to make a difference one day, to ultimately give back.