Ashik Ahmed left Bangladesh for Australia and built Deputy into a major company. He credits his wife as an early investor and says success requires stepping outside your comfort zone and quieting your mind through meditation.
Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell. I'm talking with Ashik Ahmed. And Ashik, you came from Bangladesh. Wow. I don't know if I know somebody who came from Bangladesh and I'm kind of a provincial.
I'm going to test your geography now, Larry, and ask you nowhere Bangladesh is. But anyway. Now.
How did you wind up in Australia?
My parents migrated. My parents migrated. My whole family migrated about 25 years ago.
Were they looking for opportunity?
Yeah, yeah, they were looking for opportunity in there. And yeah, look, I mean, you know, Bangladesh is a. Well, it's probably smaller than Oregon and landmass is only 55,000 square miles, but the population is 160 million. So half the population of the United States in a state that is the size of Oregon, for example. Okay, so it's highly populated. Yeah, that's wonderful. It's a developing country. It has improved a lot over the last 25 years. But I tell you what, it really gives you perspective on life, about what an opportunity and ticket in life it is to call Australia home. What an opportunity in life to call the United States home.
Yeah. And you know, it's an advantage that very few people really think about to come from being outsider and work your way in. You know what I'm saying? Of course you appreciate things more.
My wife is my first investor. When I started Deputy, I started on my savings and soon ran out. And then I got married and I'm like, hey, I don't have money right now. You need to pay the rent and other things just so that I get the business up and going. So she has my number one along with my co founder. She's my biggest investor and believed in me. And yeah, one of our ambition was to do an mba. So over the last few years, she has embarked.
Yeah, well, that's fantastic. I mean that's another privilege and enjoyment, satisfaction. Now as from the position you're in though, people do seek you out for, you know, they look for, if they're smart, they'll seek out people like yourself. They don't get a chance to find them. And I would imagine what we usually find on this thing, Sheikh, is that even the people in the inner core of people that are my guests, when they listen to these interviews, they find out things about their boss that they, they never knew. So I bet when you're it'll be interesting to see the reaction from your five directs. Five or six direct guys, you know, when they listen to this, when people come to you, what, what direction do you try and steal? Steer them to steer them for success, you know, because your lessons, like you say, are hard learned. You had to learn these things from, you know, you came from the ground up and that's, you know, that's the way I came. And so they stick with you long. We all see things different because we have different skill sets and things come to us easier than other things. But when you, what do you try and what direction do you try and steer people when you're steering them for success?
Well, success happens at the edge or outside of one's comfort zone. I mean, when people are coming to me for success, my first evaluation over here is that are you trying to achieve something while sitting at your comfort zone or the reason you're here with me, because you need help getting, you know, the guidance how to get on that edge or outside of your comfort zone for which you can be tremendously successful or like an ru. I mean there's a great formula of success is it's, you know, it's potential minus interference. Okay. I think there's a book called the book of Inner Game about how you, how you become tremendously successful at sports or whatever you want to do. It's all down to one thing. Your true potential minus your interference. Okay. Your potential is usually only limited by your ambition of what you can be. Okay. And your interface are all the things that holding you back.
Yeah.
And 99% of the time, Larry, it's you yourself who is holding you back.
And where did you get, you know, because you've got. One of my things, Ashik, is that we all have to be our own best self coach because things happen to us and you have to be able to talk to yourself to get yourself back on track, stay on track, have the right attitude in the different situations you go through. And so where did you get most of your insight or ideas that really impacted you the most, would you say?
If there's one tip, and this is something I have learned just in last 12 months, Larry, and this is the hardest thing to do. This is the hardest thing to do. Can you quieten your mind? Can you make your mind quiet as opposed to letting your mind talk to your head all the time and really running you around and causing all the as just shown and trauma which is self inflicted, can you just let your mind be quiet? It's the hardest thing to do. If you can do that, I guarantee you next moment you'll have the answer. Next moment, next moment you'll have the answer.
You've learned that. Do you have one thing that experience where that happened to you recently or no?
Nothing, nothing specific on that one. Larry, about that one thing in there. It's just a muscle we need to grow. It's just a muscle you need to grow. And one of the ways of growing this muscle is kind of like being mindfulness and having meditation. Doing meditation is what actually, really, really helps.
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