In this conversation, Andy Ireland shares how a lifetime of seemingly “random” adventures—from hitchhiking to the 1975 Sunbury Pop Festival to selling mobile phones before a tower even existed—ultimately led him to build an award‑winning surf shop in Port Augusta and become “that four wheel drive podcast guy.” He and Jewels unpack how storytelling underpinned everything: insurance sales, dive businesses, mobile phones, retail, and now podcasting.

Andy explains how he learned to own a category (like sunglasses) in a small regional town, why customer service and stock depth beat “country store” expectations, and how industry benchmarks and KPIs helped him turn a small shop into one of Australia’s top single‑store surf retailers. Along the way, he reflects on the wild days working on railway gangs, near‑misses like almost walking into Cyclone Tracy, and why how you make people feel matters more than the exact words you use.

Key Topics & Timestamps

Note: Timestamps are approximate placeholders—adjust to your actual audio.
• 00:00 – Intro: The Telling of Story podcast and “dominating your category”
• 02:00 – Meet Andy Ireland: From four wheel drive podcast host to award‑winning surf retailer
• 05:00 – A wildly varied life: business coaching, renovations, life insurance, and underwater adventures
• 09:00 – “Do your own eulogy”: Why no one else knows your full story
• 12:00 – Leaving home at 17, hitchhiking, and narrowly missing Cyclone Tracy
• 16:00 – The Sunbury Pop Festival: Camping, chance work, and becoming “first arrivals”
• 20:00 – Months as a fruit‑picking drifter and the realization “there’s got to be more to life”
• 23:00 – Life on the rails: Fetla work, Wild West conditions, and learning to grow up fast
• 28:00 – Discovering storytelling through life insurance sales
• 33:00 – Cold calling, scripts, and why every sale is really a story about the client
• 38:00 – “People remember how you made them feel”: Empathy, trust and connection
• 42:00 – Becoming more entrepreneurial and backing your own ideas
• 46:00 – Selling mobile phones in Broome before the tower even existed
• 51:00 – Market research by road trip: How surf shops exist where there is no surf
• 55:00 – SWOT analysis and the decision to return to Port Augusta
• 58:00 – Launching a surf shop in a town with zero surf labels
• 1:02:00 – Retail as a calling: Discovering what you want to do in your 40s
• 1:06:00 – Customer service, stock depth, and not feeling like a “country store”
• 1:10:00 – Finding Isra and levelling up with KPIs, segmentation and POS data
• 1:15:00 – Building an industry body and surf retail awards based on real metrics
• 1:20:00 – Winning best single store in SA and runner‑up in Australia
• 1:24:00 – Dominating a category: Owning sunglasses in the Spencer Gulf
• 1:28:00 – The Oakley custom program: How a great story wins national opportunities
• 1:33:00 – Why radio beat TV and how “What’s On in Port Augusta” became their story vehicle
• 1:38:00 – Storytelling as service: Making the customer the hero, not the store

Key Takeaways

• A varied life story becomes a powerful source of business credibility and narrative if you know how to thread it together.
• Storytelling in sales isn’t manipulation; it’s framing value in a way that makes sense in the customer’s world.
• Category domination often starts with a clear decision: “What can we own?”—then backing it with stock, service, and consistent messaging.
• Benchmarks and KPIs don’t kill creativity; they give small retailers the confidence and insight to play at a bigger level.
• People rarely remember your exact words, but they always remember how you made them feel in the interaction.