RISE

RISE is Mark Bouris's more personal, biographically grounded follow-up to his earlier business advice books, written and published during a period of major global disruption (the early COVID-19 pandemic era) as both a memoir of his own path from a working-class upbringing in Punchbowl, a western Sydney suburb, to founding two major Australian financial institutions, and a broader argument that resilience, self-belief, and willingness to work hard are more foundational to success than talent, credentials, or advantage. Bouris frames the book explicitly as a response to a specific historical moment — widespread disruption and lost confidence in existing systems — arguing that individuals and small business owners need to take ownership of their own reinvention rather than waiting for external conditions to improve.

The book weaves Bouris's own biography (his working-class family background, his early career, and the founding and growth of Wizard Home Loans and later Yellow Brick Road) together with the practical and psychological lessons he draws from that path, including a recurring emphasis on resilience under pressure, financial literacy as a foundation for confidence, and the specific soft skills (relationship-building, reading people, negotiation) he attributes partly to mentors and formative experiences, referenced in reader commentary as including lessons drawn from his relationship with prominent Australian businessman Kerry Packer.

Unlike a pure how-to business book, RISE spends significant space on mindset and self-belief as prerequisites for any tactical business advice to matter — Bouris's argument is that people often reject entrepreneurial or career risk not because the tactics are wrong but because they don't believe, at a deeper level, that someone like them is allowed to succeed at that level. The book works to dismantle that belief through Bouris's own example of starting without financial advantage.

The book closes with a call to action aimed particularly at small business owners and entrepreneurs navigating disruption, urging readers to treat major disruption as an opportunity for reinvention rather than purely a threat, and positioning resilience and self-belief, built through the specific psychological and practical habits Bouris describes, as the foundation for rising to meet that opportunity.