On brand

A good brand doesn’t just look pretty; it’s an HR asset, a reputation and a must, says brand expert Jamie Bell of Paulownia Design Studio.

Good branding gives businesses an unfair advantage to really make their mark in their industry. It's not just about having a visually appealing logo or an eye-catching website; branding is about crafting an identity that resonates with your audience, sets you apart in a sea of sameness, and ultimately drives business opportunity.  

At its core, branding is about creating an emotional connection with your people. It's about conveying who you are, what you stand for, and why you matter. In the overwhelm of the 21st Century, a strong brand gives businesses the upper hand – it's the secret sauce that propels them to outperform their competition and make them undeniable to those they want to connect with.

But what exactly does good branding entail? It's about crafting a cohesive identity that permeates every aspect of your business. It's about the visual elements – the colours, fonts, and imagery – that make up your brand's aesthetic. But it's also about the intangible aspects – the personality of your brand, the tone of voice you use, the key messages you communicate, and the impact statement that defines your higher purpose.

Take, for example, brands like Kowtow. Beyond just selling clothes, Kowtow has embraced activism as a core tenet of its brand. They exist not just to push profits but to make the world a better place. By aligning their brand with a higher purpose, they've cultivated a loyal following of customers who share their values and want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

But branding isn't just for the big players. Whether you're a solopreneur or a multinational corporation, the principles of branding remain the same. It's about authenticity, consistency, and connecting with the right people. 

It's about telling your story in a way that makes your business unforgettable. The power of branding lies in transcending trends (not just following them) and delivering a potent, simple message that ignites connection.

As the economy faces uncertainty, rebranding can offer incredible leverage to transform your business and drive your measure of success. So if your branding needs an up level, now is the time. Because having a good brand isn't just an advantage – it's an absolute game-changer. 

paulownia.org.nz

Boost your business success

Roz Irwin explains how to unlock the full potential of your business with Tauranga Business Chamber's resources and support.

Photo Salina Galvan

There are many support resources available for businesses, but they’re spread across government agencies and non-government organisations. Plus, they keep changing; it’s hard to keep up.

It would be great if there was a local hub where people could understand where all the resources and support for businesses are available. 

Great news, there is!

Tauranga Business Chamber has a dedicated, independent contracts team whose job is to know what resources and support channels are available for businesses and get them connected to the services that best suit their needs. 

Whether you’re well-established and looking to innovate or train your leaders, or you have a business idea and are unsure where to start, the Tauranga Business Chamber is the hub of business resources and support that can help all stages of business.

Each year, we help hundreds of business leaders and entrepreneurs start their business, access free resources, gain Government support, and connect with local experts. 

No matter the stage in the economic cycle, there are always opportunities for business owners to offer new solutions to customers’ obstacles and challenges. 

Our services range from a free one-hour session with a business advisor, support to boost your capability, or resources to leverage your innovation and R&D. 

Our advisors are independent and impartial. They are driven to help businesses succeed and reach their potential. 

Anyone can access our business support services; you don’t need to be a member of the Tauranga Business Chamber. 

Times are tough right now, but as another saying goes: “We’re all in this together.” If you’re seeking some extra support, reach out to our team and see how we can help. It’s free, it’s independent, and it’s impartial.  

tauranga.org.nz

Your true north

If you could work out what really drives you as a person,
what change could you make in the world? We meet Catie Noble
from Upward, who does exactly that for her clients.

Words Jenny Rudd  |  Photos Jeremy Bright – Grabb

Imagine you’re giving a speech to announce the closing down of your business because you’ve achieved everything you set out to do. Catie Noble, owner of Upward, would sound something like this.

“Thanks to our mahi, everyone now knows what impact they’d like to have on the world, and they have a plan to make it happen. Our world is getting better, because every person is doing what they care about, and they are doing it well.”

Based in Taupō but with clients in Tauranga and further afield, this is one of the many tools Catie uses in her workshops, regular coaching and activity sessions to help businesses and ambitious individuals do better.

There’s some noise in the background during our interview, so I ask where she is. Wellington airport, en route to Climate Action Marlborough. Over this week, Catie has: Problem-solved a global go-to-market strategy for a New Zealand beauty startup, brought together teams in a large corporate to help them uncover the “stinky fish” that was creating a business-limiting culture (and gave them tools to resolve it), and met with one of her regular clients, a high-end interior designer. And that’s all before immersing herself into climate solutions in the South Island.

“I’ve spent the last 20 years listening to people and extracting the core issues holding them back. I take their stories and experiences, distil what’s happening for them, and help them get clear and take action. And like any business owner, I’ve made a bunch of mistakes, faced tough challenges and had to come up with novel ways to solve them, and brought my team along for the ride.” Clearly she’s good at it.

It’s a modest description of the last two decades. Catie has built and sold successful health businesses, and was awarded the Supreme Business of the Year and Excellence in Business Leadership at the BNZ Taupō Business Awards. As president and chairperson of Taupō’s Business Chamber she led them through a huge transformation, then sat on the board of the region’s economic development agency. Recently Catie was an advisor on Electrify, an accelerator for female-founded startups, and the business she mentored, Vince, completed a successful capital raise during that time.

Not one to sit still, she’s a voracious learner. COVID-19 lockdowns provided the opportunity to do a post-grad certificate in leading Change
for Good, designed by education visionary Francis Valentine, CEO of Mind Lab.

Catie says that the business owners, senior executive teams or high performers that she works with often come to her knowing there’s a problem, but can’t articulate what it is. It’s when the task ahead seems messy and woolly that Catie really adds value.

“People who want to push themselves are well-suited to working with me. They know they can do more but in our overloaded world they might struggle with decisions or get overwhelmed with what needs to be done. I straighten out their thinking and get them cranking. I've worked with tech startups, founders, heavy industry, tradies, national utilities in New Zealand (Catie’s a geothermal enthusiast), and everything in between. I want to work with interesting people on interesting problems. If you want to make the effort, then I'm ready to jump in.” 

Upward.nz

Being the change

The Graeme Dingle Foundation improves the lives of our youth by not only equipping them with skills to build bright futures, but opening their eyes to the exciting possibilities around them. And it’s not just the children who are benefiting from the foundation’s programmes.

Accomplished adventurer, mountaineer, author, artist, filmmaker and philanthropist Sir Graeme Dingle knows how to squeeze the very most out of what life has to offer – and he sees it as his calling to equip New Zealand’s youth with the same limitless sense of possibility. More than 25 years ago, he pledged to improve our country’s concerning youth statistics, and so the Graeme Dingle Foundation was born. The vision is to positively impact the lives of our tamariki, and make Aotearoa the best place in the world

for children to flourish.

Today, Graeme and partner Lady Dingle, Jo-anne Wilkinson, are proud to see the foundation’s programmes reach 28,000 school-aged rangatahi across the country. The programme seeks to improve self-esteem, educate about positive choices and values for health and happiness, offer practical life skills and impart a sense of adventure. The ultimate goal is a positive attitude, useful skills and real future possibilities.

The couple are adventurers in the truest sense. Graeme has ascended the world’s most challenging mountains, sometimes with climbing buddy, the late Sir Edmund Hillary, and Jo-anne’s epic Arctic and Antarctic traverses and mountaineering achievements also attest to the couple’s grit and determination to succeed. It’s the same drive and courage that underpins the foundation’s objectives to make a real difference in the lives of our youth so they too can thrive and surmount any challenges life throws at them.

But creating an aspiring generation requires inspiring role models and this is where the foundation’s mentor program plays a crucial and highly-rewarding part in its success. Lynette and Dave Gillies of Z Energy have mentored five students between them. They were involved with the Graeme Dingle Foundation through Z Energy’s ‘Good in the Hood’ initiative, when the foundation’s Western Bay of Plenty manager Dan Allen-Gordon approached them about mentoring. Although experienced in business coaching and management, mentoring rangatahi was totally new to them. However, not only was the mentor training day extremely helpful in preparing them, they also found the foundation always available for support if needed. 

So what does the role of mentor actually involve? The expectation is to meet up once every fortnight but to have contact once a week, with fun group activities for all the students and their mentors arranged periodically throughout the year. “The idea is to find things to do together that create space to talk,” says Dave. And although the experiences they have shared with their mentees is impressive – surfing, mountain biking, mud runs, baking and cooking at their home as well as work experience and community events within Z – Dave insists the most important thing is to simply lend an ear to the young people under their mentorship. “It’s important to listen to both what they say and what they don’t say” says Dave. Lynette agrees, “Listening skills are the biggest thing you need. Often you don’t need to talk, just to listen.”

Both Dave and Lynette speak enthusiastically about what they’ve gained from mentoring. “The opportunity to learn about yourself is huge,” says Dave. Lynette says young people have shown

her a different view of the world. “It really opened my eyes and reinforced that we must listen to young people more. They have so much to offer.”

What advice would they give to people considering mentoring? “Just do it!” says Dave. “An hour a week is not a big commitment to make a huge difference. When you see where these students end up after their mentoring period, it’s awesome.” Lynette says mentoring has improved her own personal growth, too. “You give, but you get so much back. The feeling you get when you see them go from where they were, to blossoming young adults, is just amazing.”

When Helen Fraser, the owner of Mount Maunganui store Bettie Monroe, heard about mentoring at the Dingle Foundation, she knew it was the right option for her. She wanted to volunteer in the community and had always loved being around children and teenagers. “Being a teenager is difficult,” says Helen. “The chance to help, to give opportunities and be a positive role model and inspire young people is amazing, I love it.”

Helen says the mentor matching process is a bit like speed dating – a really fun way for both students and mentors to work out who they connect with. Helen’s mentorship activities arranged by the foundation, included skydiving, paddle boarding, inspirational talks and once, an evening walk round the Mount with a DOC ranger where they witnessed the penguins returning. “There were a lot of opportunities for us both to experience new things and learn together.” Helen also enjoyed one-on-one time on days out, shopping trips and meeting for hot chocolates. A big part of mentoring is also goal setting,” says Helen. “Each student has a book and we set goals then revisit and evaluate them. They also learn lots of life skills like CV writing and interview practice.”

Helen enjoyed mentoring so much, she has gone on to do it twice more. Seeing students grow and being beside them as they overcome challenges and accomplish their goals is just amazing. And it isn’t difficult, it’s just about being a friend, a listening ear and a sounding board – and loving life and being up for a challenge!” Paris, who was the first young person Helen mentored, went on to be a mentor herself – testament to the positive impact mentoring, and the Project K (a 14-month program for year 10 students that incorporates a wilderness adventure and community challenge) had on her life.

Dan Allen-Gordon says, “Our mentors come from all walks of life, but the thing they have in common is

passion to make a real difference in the challenging world our rangatahi face. Every one of us that overcame major obstacles as a young person has had a significant adult help us succeed. It is the greatest gift we can give to care and not judge.”

The Graeme Dingle Foundation Western Bay of Plenty reaches over 3,700 tamariki and rangatahi each week with their proven programmes, building resilience and well-being in young people. From Kiwi Can, a values and life skills primary school programme to whole school peer-mentoring and ready for work programmes such as Stars, Career Navigator and Project K. The programmes cater to young people aged 5 to 18, helping the participants to thrive and understand what they have inside is greater than any obstacle they may face. A key part of some of these programmes is mentoring, and for both the students and mentors this represents an extremely rewarding, and life-changing experience.  

dinglefoundation.org.nz  

Entrepreneur and disability advocate Charmeyne Te-Nana Williams

Entrepreneur and disability advocate Charmeyne employs over 200 people to support people with disabilities, like her husband, Peter who suffered a brain injury in a boxing match. Whatever It Takes is a fitting name for her business, and the way Charmeyne approaches life. She lives between Mt Maunganui and Auckland.

PHOTOS Garth Badger WORDS Jenny Rudd

At a recent event for our speaker series, This Is How I Did It, Charmeyne told us the incredible story of how her husband Peter Williams’ brain injury and resulting tetraplegia has shaped her life. 

Charmeyne and Peter had baby twin girls, who'd just arrived home from a 5-month hospital stay after their premature birth. And four weeks earlier, the couple had buried their son who passed away after being born at 26 weeks. Charmeyne was at home with their daughters in Auckland, on maternity leave for a job she loved at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise in the Māori enterprise team. Peter was down in Timaru at a boxing match, on his path to his plan to qualify for the Olympics. He'd previously won the world title for waka ama (canoe racing) in Tahiti. He was strong, athletic, and world class at the disciplines he put his mind to. He called Charmeyne and announced "I won, so I'm now the New Zealand Super Heavyweight Champion. I just need to go and do a drug test, then I'll call you back."

But he didn't call back. One of his teammates did. Charmeyne said it wasn't what he said that was worrying, it was what he couldn't say. He could barely get the words out. Peter had suffered a traumatic brain injury which left him a tetraplegic.

Her story was so inspiring, we knew we couldn’t leave it in the room. 

---

I remember the day Peter went down to Timaru like it was yesterday. It was labour weekend in 2002. That morning, we'd talked about what we had dreamt the night before. We often did that. He said "I dreamt that my spirit had left my body and it was flying across Samoa.”

After I'd spoken to Peter when he won, I remember being so excited. I thought he hadn't rung back because he was out celebrating. Then his teammate called me and said "You need to get down here." At that point I had no idea what that meant. I didn’t know what I was walking into. 

I’ve been so lucky and blessed, because my family has been amazing. My sister was staying with us at the time and she looked after our babies. I jumped on a plane and went down to Timaru. 

Since that day, my life has really been in stages. Stage one was going down to Timaru. 

STAGE ONE

The Rude Awakening

Some of the questions that came to mind at this time were: What the hell is a traumatic brain injury? I had no idea. I had never worried about Peter because he was so strong.

What the hell is this health system? I had no idea what I was walking into. I went into the hospital, he was in ICU and I just didn’t know what to expect. We weren’t allowed to stay there, so that was really daunting for me. 

If it wasn’t enough that we were trying to deal with what was going on with Peter, it was all over the news. My brother rang me up and said, “Have you seen the newspaper?” On a front page was an article that said Peter was actually a Black Power member and had sustained his brain injury through an initiation. So he’s trying to fight for his life and here’s this article on the front page. Where did that even come from?

I rang a friend of mine whose husband was an All Black who’d had some bad publicity, and he put me onto his lawyer who represented us for nothing. We went to court to get them to retract what they'd printed.

By this time, I had to send my girls off, at eight months old, to live with their grandparents in Wellington so that I could work out how to help Peter. Thank god for my whānau, because if it wasn’t for them, I’d never have been able to get through these early stages.

STAGE TWO

The BS

I thought the system would focus on what's best for Peter, me and our whānau. But it didn't feel like that at all. You'd think you’d go from stage to stage – from hospital, to rehab, to home but, actually, it's not that way. Every time I went to another stage of what I thought was our recovery, it was just the same shit on a different day. All I knew was that I loved this man and wanted to keep my family together – that was my priority.

It wasn't just the medical system either, it was our society. Arriving in Auckland, a friend asked me if I was going to stay with Peter as a partner. I was shocked. They asked if I really knew what I was getting myself in for.

We left Timaru after a month and moved into ICU in Auckland for a month, then Peter moved to a rehab facility in West Auckland just before Christmas 2002. I thought that was going to be awesome, but it was really bad. The staff weren’t used to family members sticking around, but I was there every day. I became known as ‘the bitch’ – true story. In my mind I couldn’t understand why, because I was just trying to figure out how I could make sure that Peter was well looked after. What I started to realise was that everyone was doing what they thought was best, as opposed to what was best for me and my family. 

Trying to find financial support to keep my family going was really difficult. When my maternity leave was over and I had to go back to work, I thought I’d go to Work & Income to get help with child support but was told I wasn't eligible because I was earning too much. I’m on $50k and I’ve got an adult who has a serious disability and two children. How is that a high income?

Then I was offered redundancy, which I took, because it meant I could go on benefit. I fought with my pride. I had never been on a benefit. But I knew that if I didn't, it was really going to affect my family's well being and my ability to care for them. I was exhausted and I needed to, so I did. And rather than pay me the extra $100 a week on top of my wages I could have been earning, they paid me about $70,000 a year to be on benefit and to support my kids. That seemed dumb! 

You expect and trust that the experts are giving you the right advice, but I learned that that’s not the case. I found out some time later that Peter had been eligible for child support the whole time. We had to go to court to recoup it. What a waste of time and money for everyone involved.

STAGE THREE

Kete of knowledge

Finally, the penny dropped. When you’re in a rehab facility, you have a multidisciplinary team. You go to these whānau meetings and sometimes you might be the only member of the whānau with 12 clinicians around the table, who are all telling you what you should do. I was in one of these meetings and everyone was talking about how aggressive I was. I could feel myself shrinking into a corner in the chair, just fading away. My cousin was sitting next to me and she said, “You know, what some people would describe as aggressive, others would describe as proactive”. That was a turning point for me. I thought, that's right. I’m being proactive. I’m not being aggressive, I’m just fighting for what I know is right.

From then on, I started to listen, observe and figure out the things that Peter would respond well to in terms of his rehab. I thought about how I could take all these little bits of advice and information and fill up my kete of knowledge to move forward for Peter.

As well as learning from the model he was under, I looked around the world for different care models that fit what I believed he needed.

My aunty, who’s Māori and a social worker, said, “Have a look at this and tell me what you think.” It was a Māori model of care called Te Aho Takitoru which had been developed by her team as a social work kaupapa. What really jumped out to me was that the mana of the person being cared for was at the core. Reading it solidified in my mind what I have been trying to do since Peter's accident - I was fighting for the mana of this man. I just wanted him to be recognised as the man of the family, as a dad and as a partner. That’s all I was asking – nothing more and nothing less.

STAGE FOUR

Home is where the heart is

I thought going home was going to be easy – but it wasn’t. Having been in hospital and rehab for nearly three years, we’d applied to ACC to fund the modifications we needed for Peter to live at home. It was just before Christmas and I got a reply from ACC saying they’d declined our application. The application had taken forever, and they'd said no. I felt it was because they were solely looking at the injury and how to manage that injury. It was being done adequately, they felt, in the rehab centre. I could see though that there was so much more to the picture surrounding Peter's injury. What about his well-being, his wairua (spirit) and the mental health of my family as a result of the care decisions?

When ACC turned down our application, I thought if I don’t do something now, my family is just not going to survive this. 

My brother-in-law worked for 60 Minutes and asked if they could do a story on us. I had turned down offers like this in the past, but I was desperate. So I said ok on the condition that Peter's integrity was maintained, and that the focus should be on getting Peter home.

At one stage during the research, I could see there was some focus on the fictitious Black Power connection. So I went marching up to the Black Power pad in Mt Wellington, knocked on the door and asked their leader to speak on 60 Minutes and set the record straight that Peter was not connected to them.

In the end, the show only talked about ACC for about a minute and how our application had been declined. It took three years for them to decline it, and honestly about two days to approve it.

Finally, we were going home. I got so excited. But we then headed into a new world. The world of agencies. In 18 months, we had around a hundred people come through my house. My girls were verbally abused, and Peter was physically and sexually abused. We went through another grueling court process to bring the sexual abuser to justice, but she got off on a technicality. That whole process was so traumatising for me. It was like I was the criminal. This woman wasn’t held accountable in any way, shape or form, and neither was the agency. That was it. No more. I had to take all my learnings and bring them together to provide a new model.

We weren't the only family going through this either. I knew there were others looking for the same as us, so I put together a business proposal to set up a programme bringing together everything I learnt from Te Aho Takitoru, my research and experience in hospital, at the rehab facility, and the agencies.

Ten years after Peter's accident, I set up What Ever It Takes, a home-based rehabilitation service.

STAGE FIVE

Doing Whatever It Takes

Our vision for our company was to set the standard internationally for how we care for families, regardless of their situation. 

The biggest difference between a mainstream clinical approach and the Māori model we use, is we take into consideration all aspects of what’s going on in the whānau’s lives. A mainstream model looks at what's best for that injury in isolation. But that’s not reality for our families. We don't focus just on physical things like the brain or the spine. This person lives at home with a whole family, so we consider that whole picture. What help do they need to access their entitlements? What is the best wrap-around care that this particular family needs? How does the family operate? What are their dynamics? What are their values? What do they need to support them to live how they want to live?

We work mainly with Māori and Pacific Island whānau. They’re already compromised and they’re further compromised with this disability. I’m a supporter of whānau looking after whānau. I think if you want your whānau member to look after you, then let them look after you. There have been lots of debates about whether whānau members take advantage of the situation, but that’s really not my experience.

Our business model has allowed us to really flourish through the lockdown periods. We’re essential services, but we have a single team for each whānau we look after, so during lockdown we went right back to our aspirational goals and how we were going to do that within the confines of our four walls.

Each time my company gets audited, we receive continuous improvement on continuous improvement. That’s not just great, that’s exceptional in our sector. My goal is to create pathways for the future. I want us to be able to really pave the way for other organisations to come in and support families. 

STAGE SIX

A deep breath

When my girls were at intermediate school, I realised that I had become so absorbed with what was going on for Peter that I was being counterproductive. That's when I started to think about my happiness. All they’d known their whole life was this environment of conflict where I'd been fighting for Peter. It was incredibly hard, but I moved out. It was the right thing for Peter to be able to work with his team from then on, and for our girls, and me.

My journey continues. It's been 18 years and time moves on. My father and my grandmother have passed away. My twins are leaving school. 

I never thought that I’d meet somebody or fall in love, but I have. I’ve had feelings of guilt, but Peter and I were only young when this happened; he was 27. I’ve always committed to being married to Peter. But I got to a point where I thought, I don’t want to die wondering if there could have been more.

When we first met, Rob said to me, “I need to tell you something, I’m having a baby,” and I went, “Oh well, I’m married. I’ll have your baby if you have my husband.” And he goes, “Sweet.” So that’s been the basis of our family. We have five kids now with our big, beautiful, blended whānau. We have all this extended whānau on Rob’s side, and we have Peter and our extended whānau on my side, including Peter’s two sons Puna ma Faleasi and Siagogo. 

It's unconventional, but it works because we make it work. I feel that’s probably my biggest learning: you just have to make things work.

---

No reira ngā mihi nui, ki a koutou. Mo te whakarongo mai ki ahau. Thank you for listening to me. Go home and tell the people that you love how much you love them. I’ve learnt how to care for my family and it's the pathway that I intend to to follow forever more.

---

What Ever It Takes

There's such determination in the name of Charmeyne Te Nana-Williams's business. And love, when you consider who the beneficiaries are of this determination. What Ever It Takes employs over 200 people across the North Island to deliver a programme of home-based care for people with severe and complex disabilities. What makes it different is the whanāu-centred approach. The family is involved in all aspects of the care, because Whatever It Takes looks at the needs of the whole family, rather than keeping the spotlight on just the injury.

This programme has been developed by Charmeyne and her team to give control, mana and quality of life to those suffering from and affected by major brain traumas and other life-changing disabilities. Their struggle to be allowed to take Peter home to care for him showed Charmeyne that there was a need for a different model of care.

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Theresa Gattung: pioneering change from the top down

A regular fixture on Fortune’s most powerful women in international business lists, Theresa is no stranger to the challenges such females face. Now leading the New Zealand chapter of SheEO, she’s helping a global community make long-overdue change. 

Spend any time looking into the life and times of Theresa Gattung and you’ll realise one thing very quickly: she’s not afraid to pioneer change. Arriving in the public eye at the age of 37, when she became the youngest ever and first female chief executive of Telecom (now Spark), she then went on to co-found My Food Bag, the home-delivered cooking-kit service that revolutionised the way thousands of New Zealanders approach mealtimes. She’s been recognised as one of the country’s leading philanthropists, working with charities such as the SPCA and Tauranga-based Cambodia Charitable Trust, and more recently launched the New Zealand arm of world-first female venture-capital fund SheEO. 

Playing her part in an ambitious goal to see 10,000 women-led ventures funded through SheEO worldwide, Theresa’s knee-deep in what may be her most important quest for change yet. To put its significance into context and demonstrate the urgent need for organisations of SheEO’s kind, you need only to consider that worldwide just four percent of all available capital is currently invested in women-led ventures. Having spent decades holding prominent positions in the business world, Theresa’s quick to recognise that even in 2020, the playing field for women in business is still far from even. “You don't really have to walk very long as a woman in business to realise that it's still harder,” she says. “It's not as hard as it was 20 or 30 years ago, but it’s still hard.” 

As the daughter of two entrepreneurial British migrants, it’s no surprise that Theresa grew up to be business-savvy, with a bent for challenging the status quo. Leaving behind their native London, her working-class parents, Marion and John, set sail for New Zealand in the 1960s. They were what Theresa affectionately calls, “ten-pound Poms”. “They paid £10, got the passage by ship and had to sign an agreement saying that they’d stay in New Zealand for at least two years,” she says. “And here they are, over 50 years later.”

Moving from their initial base in Wellington to settle in the Bay of Plenty, Marion and John set up a souvenir business in Rotorua. “My parents were entrepreneurs, in a small way,” says Theresa. “My father retired from the paid workforce in his forties after ill-health and had to support himself ever since, with property and other interests. So, yes, I come from a background of small business people.” 

Breaking away from their established family tradition of taking the same career path as their parents before them, Theresa believes that her parents’ success in New Zealand is partly due to their adopted Kiwi mentality – simply getting stuck in and being willing to try something new. She also recognises her father’s progressive and supportive approach to parenting as a unique factor in shaping the person she became. “My father had only sisters and then he had four daughters,” she says. “He was always very encouraging of us reaching our full potential, and never had any particular gender stereotypes about what girls could do [or] boys could do, which was pretty unusual [at the time].” 

On completing her schooling in Rotorua, Theresa studied a business degree at the University of Waikato, before moving to Wellington to complete a law degree. Even as a young adult, she understood that she would need to play her part in fighting for gender equality in the business world. At the time, there were no women running large companies in New Zealand, so she knew that achieving her dream of running a large company by the age of 40 would not be easy. “I've always understood that there are structural issues that can hold women back in society,” she says. 

In the years that followed, Theresa began her corporate career climb through TVNZ, National Mutual, the Bank of New Zealand and telecommunications company Telecom. Originally joining the latter in 1994, she was appointed CEO in 1999. As its first female CEO, she was thrust into the public eye, at times facing challenges that her male counterparts would rarely experience (after being announced as chief executive at a press conference, the first question she was asked was if she intended to have children). 

As she says in her memoir, Bird on a Wire, Theresa successfully led the company into an entirely new era of communication. “I joined Telecom in 1994 and I was given a cell phone that was really big; you almost needed a separate briefcase for the size of the cell phones!” she laughs. Two years later, returning from a conference in Europe in 1996, she began to realise just how big the internet was destined to become, and went on to lead Telecom’s transition into the age of IT. “When I was CEO, we bought a couple of large IT companies. We bought Gen-i and we bought Computer Land, and we put it together with Telecom’s IT division and we called it Gen-i. Then over that time, Telecom became the number-one provider of IT services.”

Stepping down from her role at Telecom in 2007, Theresa spent several years pursuing other business and philanthropic ventures, before co-founding My Food Bag in 2012 with Cecilia and James Robinson. “When Cecilia was on maternity [leave] with her son, Tom, she wrote up the business plan for My Food Bag and showed it to me,” she says. “I looked at it and I thought, ‘Yes, this is really gonna work’. I realised that something like that would fill such a need for women of every situation because ‘What are we going to have for dinner tonight?’ usually falls on the woman of the household.” 

As chair of My Food Bag and a key investor, Theresa worked with the Robinsons, Nadia Lim and her husband Carlos Bagrie to swiftly get the business off the ground. “In the beginning it was just us and then we started hiring people, and we did have that philosophy that we're going to go for the best,” she says. “We had the best advisors, we got the best people and we always thought that it could be a bigger business. We never saw it just as a small business. We set it up, the systems and everything, to scale fast.” 

After huge and rapid success, a majority share of My Food Bag was sold to Waterman Capital, freeing Theresa up to focus on building a name for SheEO in New Zealand. “When I heard [SheEO founder] Vicki Saunders speak a few years ago at a conference in America, she had just launched SheEO in Canada [in 2015] and I thought it was a brilliant idea,” she says. “Her idea was to completely change the paradigm.”

Simple yet hugely effective, SheEO operates on the principal of ‘radical generosity’, a belief that trust, collaboration and a strong female community is key to creating opportunities for more women-led ventures to succeed. Each year, an intake of local investors, called Activators, each contribute $1100 into a central funding pool. These women then work together to choose five women-led ventures to fund through five-year interest-free loans. 

“[Vicki] had a couple of cycles [of funding] in Canada and I went up to her and said, ‘This would be fantastic in New Zealand,’” says Theresa. “I organised a conference and brought her down [to New Zealand] and she presented to a room full of 500 women who just loved the idea. We decided to launch in New Zealand, but then we hit a roadblock because in Canada [SheEO] is not a business or a charity. It's not tax-deductible and it doesn't want it to be a charity. We're trying to reframe what business is, and I believe the world will be more effectively changed through business than through charity. So we struggle because the law doesn't really have a category that's in between.”

“You don't really have to walk very long as a woman in business to realise that it's still harder.”

Having ironed out some teething problems and brought Westpac on board as a key supporter, the New Zealand chapter of SheEO has so far raised $700,000, which has been loaned to 10 local ventures over two cycles of funding. Worldwide, SheEO has so far raised more than US$4 million in loans through 4000 Activators, allowing 53 women-led ventures in five countries to gain vital funding. The opportunity to change the face of business seems almost limitless. 

When it comes to selecting ventures to invest in, SheEO has unique criteria. They have to be at least 51 percent women-owned, be doing something good for the country, the world or the planet, meet revenue criteria and demonstrate an ability to scale. Among recent local ventures that have received funding from SheEO is Pure Peony Skincare, a Nelson-based business that uses the root of organic peonies to create natural products to soothe skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis and rosacea. 

Although SheEO has game-changing benefits for their selected ventures, the system isn’t all take. Through several nationwide and regional events, SheEO Activators have the opportunity to make invaluable business connections themselves through their involvement in the organisation. Every year, SheEO runs a launch event at which the supported ventures for the year are announced and Activators have the opportunity to gather on a national level. Along with networking opportunities, Activators also have the chance to participate in follow-on funding programmes with the ventures as and when they become available. 

“The first benefit you get as an Activator is meeting all the other Activators,” says Theresa. “Vicki comes down from Canada and it’s amazing to spend a day and an evening with that group and to be so inspired. You really make linkages that will benefit your business.” 

SheEO is unique in that the required investment is relatively minimal, allowing women of all ages and backgrounds to invest in the fund. Aiming to encourage a more diverse range of women to join as Activators, SheEO gives Activators the opportunity to split the yearly financial commitment across a monthly payment plan. This commitment to accessibility helps to ensure that SheEO not only continues to support women-led ventures, but also creates a chance for women who otherwise may not feel empowered to do so to become involved in investing. 

It’s this sort of clever thinking that has contributed to the rapid growth of SheEO locally and internationally. The first ever SheEO Global Summit took place in Canada on March 9 and SheEO Magazine launched in New Zealand with the aim to help to further the SheEO’s reach and inspire Kiwi women. 

Seeing SheEO in action, it’s obvious that the world needs more of its kind and Theresa is to be commended for having the foresight to see it could work in the New Zealand market. With a knack for knowing exactly what the world needs when, she says she allows both passion and logic to guide her when it comes to choosing what to take on. “I do what moves me at the heart level and the head level. I think, ‘I could make a difference to this and it would be a good use of my time. It’d have a big enough impact and I’d enjoy doing it.’”

Theresa knows better than anyone that New Zealand is a nation of risk-takers and innovators, but she insists we need to keep pushing for more and looking at how to solve the big issues in our society. When asked about what the world needs most right now, she puts a challenge to her fellow Kiwis. “We just need to keep being more of what we can be, because we can really mean something to the world,” she says. “We show what's possible. We have to make New Zealand the best she can be because we lead the world in many ways. We have to keep doing that, even though we're not perfect. New ways of thinking to deal with problems can flourish here. We have to become even more a part of the solution – that’s the mission of every person living in New Zealand

Theresa recommends: Inspiring reads

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood 

A sequel to Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, originally published in 1985 and now a TV series, this 2019 novel is set 15 years after the gripping and gruesome events of the first book. “I find it a complete reminder that [women] have to keep reclaiming our power and asserting our right to have our voices heard,” says Theresa. 

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer  

Written by a botanist and professor of biology, Braiding Sweetgrass explores our reciprocal relationship with the earth in connection to the widespread general awakening of ecological consciousness. “It’s a fantastic ode to nature and an inspirational read about the beauty of it,” says Theresa.

Bay business matchmakers

Paul Brljevich and Kevin Kerr of Tauranga-based Tabak Business Sales share the secrets of successful deals.

WORDS DANIEL DUNKLEY / PHOTOS SALINA GALVAN

Making the decision to sell your own business is never easy. If after years of hard slog, you opted to sell up so you could ride off into the sunset, how exactly would you go about it? Would you phone a few contacts and hope for the best, or take up an offer from the first interested party?

For the owners of Tauranga’s Tabak Business Sales, Paul Brljevich (pictured above left) and Kevin Kerr (above right), finding the right buyer is something of an art form. They could be considered matchmakers who link Bay of Plenty businesses with the most attractive suitors.

Paul and Kevin each have more than a decade’s experience in orchestrating business sales for Tabak, Tauranga’s oldest business brokerage. They say selling can be an emotional decision, but requires sharp analysis, impartiality and fairness. After all, it can be the most important decision of someone’s career.

From their base on Cameron Road, in the heart of Tauranga’s rapidly expanding business district, the duo has earned a reputation for their exceptional valuation skills, forensic-like attention to detail and extensive network of contacts. They cover sales all over the Bay of Plenty and up to the Coromandel, finding buyers for businesses valued at between $200,000 and $10 million. Tabak also has offices in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown.

Kevin has been a business broker since 2001, when he was enticed into the industry from horticultural management. Paul joined in 2007, after running companies in the leisure, hospitality and property industries, plus a spell in banking. “We’ve lived it,” says Paul. “We’ve run businesses and operated businesses, so we can relate. A person’s business is like their baby; their staff are their family. They want to find a buyer who can make things bigger and better for the future.”

The business of selling a business requires top-notch expertise. Tabak works to achieve the delicate balance of getting the right price for sellers while ensuring a fair outcome for buyers. “If the initial valuation isn’t accurate, the business will remain out there on the market,” says Kevin. “We have to give realistic valuations based on thorough analysis and data. Vendors are on one side and buyers are on the other, and we’re right in the middle brokering a fair outcome.”

How does a sale happen? First, Tabak conducts an interview with the seller. A warts-and-all review follows, which evaluates the positives and negatives of the business. Tabak then taps into its prized global network of 3500 buyers, investors and contacts. This network is so successful that 80 percent of Tabak’s listed businesses are sold before they go to the wider market, allowing sellers to discreetly find the right buyer and avoid disruptive publicity.

“It’s different to selling a home,” says Paul. “You need to know the intricacies; you need to know everything! Buyers don’t purchase because we’re slick. They do it because we’ve done our homework and presented it in the right way.”

The results speak for themselves. On average, Tabak sells businesses in just three to four months, and in the past 10 years, has consistently achieved sale prices within 10 percent of the listing price. 

So, what advice would the Bay’s business matchmakers give to potential sellers? “Confidentiality is key,” says Paul. “Have an exit plan when you start a business,” adds Kevin, who also believes advisers
with dedicated resources can make all the difference. “Because we’re smaller, we’re not trying to service a huge number of clients. We have a select number of listings, to make sure we deliver.”

Paul and Kevin clearly get a buzz out of their work. From business owners seeking a change, to 60-somethings cashing out on their lifelong endeavours, each case is different and requires a thoughtful, personalised approach. “We focus on quality, not quantity, and situations in which the whole team can work on a deal – where we all know the business inside out,” says Kevin.

The pair’s drive comes from helping people achieve their long-term goals. Whether it’s buying that dream retirement home, splashing out on a beachside bach, or funding a round-the-world trip, there’s great satisfaction in helping people reap their rewards.

“We recently had a husband-and-wife team who’d been in business together for decades – it was their life,” says Paul. “We were able to get multiple offers for it. The buyers loved it, and the couple were able to go on and enjoy their retirement – it worked for everybody. Outcomes like that are why we love what we do.”

TABAK.CO.NZ

Seaweed + Mānuka

WORDS CHANTELLE LAURENT PHOTOS LOGAN DAVEY / LARISSA DRYSDALE

We meet the award-winning business rebuilding the mānuka industry from the ground up, bringing real benefits to the East Cape.

Mānuka honey is a bit of a golden child. Lauded for its antibacterial and antiviral properties, it's a product of bees foraging on the mānuka plant: a flowering, evergreen shrub found growing prolifically across the East Cape. New Zealand Mānuka Group founder, Phil Caskey, kickstarted global demand for mānuka honey when he developed the world's first mānuka honey medical dressing in 2000 (still in use in many hospitals around the world today).

Breaking the cycle

In in 2011, after a break from the industry, a Māori landowner contacted Phil asking for help. Fairness and transparency was needed: landowners growing the plants were suffering. Phil set about establishing agreements between landowners, beekeepers and manufacturers, ensuring an open and fair return for all.

Phil returned fulltime to the industry with his business, the New Zealand Mānuka Group (NZMG). A business rooted in its belief in sustainability of the land as well as its people, the NZMG saw that the mānuka plant had so many other other uses other than just producing honey. They have built, from the ground up, an entire industry around mānuka, creating and returning wealth to local communities, and using the products to bring strength and vitality into our homes, gardens, and families.

What bees do

Bees pollinate the mānuka shrubs over their 20 to 30 year life cycle. During the short flowering season, honey is collected from the hives and processed for our consumption.  Once the flowering season is over, the trees are trimmed allowing them to thrive better, and the brush collected is processed into highly potent mānuka oil ßeta triketones (MßTK).

The residual mānuka mulch from this oil processing activity is rich in nutrients and forms a dense fibre which retains an incredible amount of nutrients, making it ideal for gardens. And because it has been steam cooked, it is free from problematic weeds.

Along the coast

Alongside the innovative group's operations with the mānuka plant, they also harvest the abundant, tidal washed seaweed from the pristine waters along the East Cape's fertile coastline. The group is the biggest producer of pharmaceutical grade agar (a jelly-like substance found in seaweed), in the southern hemisphere. In-house scientists have recently identified wide ranging benefits in the green and brown seaweeds also collected by their harvesters. These seaweeds have been found to contain essential amino acids and trace minerals which significantly boost the health of bees as well as pastures, crops and our gardens.

With NZMG building the mānuka industry and other opportunities, Māori landowners and trusts are developing their land on the East Cape into high quality, well-resourced mānuka plantations. Those with already converted land are employing and training local people into wide ranging jobs from plantation workers and production staff, right up to qualified horticulturalists and managers.

The group's full range of products is huge: honey, oils, beauty products, seaweed, garden mulch, fertiliser and so much more: and all from our lush, verdant East Cape. 

Going the full circle. 

And behind all this product innovation is a commitment to the people of the East Cape and their land. A fair share of the value NZMG creates goes back to the landowners and beekeeping partners, and so to the local community, through job creation, upskilling and redistribution of wealth. Families are able to stay together, on the land of their ancestors, and land is harvested sustainably. Everyone benefits.

Giving back to the community beyond crisis: Todd Hilleard of Noxen

“I ran at her and tackled her onto the bed. She still had the gun in her hand but now it was pointed at me. I kept thinking, ‘Is this real?’”

WORDS Ellen Brook

Todd Hilleard was passionate about being a police officer, but a routine callout turned armed confrontation was the first in a series of events that changed his state of mind. Todd had been talking to a woman who had allegedly assaulted her husband when suddenly she pulled out a pistol, held it to her head, and threatened to shoot herself.

“It was a horrible situation,” recalls Todd. “Everything was happening in slow motion and I felt awful to be pinning this woman down, trying to force the gun from her hands.It was my first time in a situation which came from nowhere and involved a firearm. I was completely unprepared for it.”

Later, Todd was rattled when a driver he’d stopped unexpectedly reached under the seat of his car. “I was worried he might be reaching for a gun, and it put me on edge,” says Todd. 

After another event where a shotgun was thought to be in the vehicle of a father who had abducted his children, Todd realised he wasn’t coping. The Police transferred him from Tauranga to Christchurch, his hometown, hoping the fresh start would improve his mental health.

But the September 2010 earthquake made Todd even more anxious. “Afterwards, I was on edge.I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin, especially going out on jobs in the middle of the night.”

During the second earthquake in February 2011, Todd was at work on the third floor of the Christchurch Central Police Station. “The alarms went on and on, and I expected the building to come down,” says Todd. “I was terrified.”

Todd didn’t have time to dwell on his fear; he was immediately sent to the CTV building which had collapsed like a concertina, killing 115 people and trapping many more. “Other cops were on top of the rubble, but I thought, ‘I can’t be here, I’m scared’," says Todd. He stayed at the scene for 12 hours. “It was chaos. I saw terrible things you hope to never see.”

There were also bright spots. Todd and his fiancée Tash were planning their wedding, and he was working on a rewarding project organising the recovery of vehicles trapped in Christchurch’s Red Zone. But the day after his stag party, Todd went to hospital with heart palpitations. He then had an allergic reaction to the drug he was given and went into anaphylactic shock. His heart needed electrical cardioversion to restart its normal rhythm.electrical cardioversion, a high-energy shock sent to the heart to restart its normal rhythm. Todd was devastated.

“I couldn’t believe this was happening to me at 30 years old,” says Todd. “I was beside myself at the thought of my heart stopping.”

Todd married Tash in April 2011. Although the wedding was a happy occasion, Todd hit rock bottom soon afterward. “I was driving to the movies when I started to have chest pains,” says Todd. “I went to the hospital, but my heart wasn’t the problem. I was having a panic attack.”

After the birth of their baby boy, Tate, Todd woke up one morning in 2011 and  knew he couldn’t go back to work. “It was time for me to stop fighting.I felt quite euphoric about that.”

He went on sick leave from the Police, and then leave without pay. Soon after, Tash, then 24 weeks pregnant with their daughter Lexi was made redundant and the young family moved back to Tauranga. Todd found solace in the local surfing scene, but he’d lost his identity as a police officer. “I’d be out and see police cars with my old mates in them. It took a long time to accept what had happened,” says Todd. He finally resigned from his job in 2013.

Although he’d left the Police, Todd’s mental health was still poor. At his lowest point, he even considered suicide. “My twisted thoughts were my biggest battle. They put me in a very dark place and I worried I was going crazy,” says Todd. “I finally got help through my doctor, went to therapy and realised that talking openly and rawly and letting myself be vulnerable really helped.”

Todd returned to the workforce in sales at Coca-Cola and then Goodman Fielder, and stayed involved in the surfing scene. His love of the sport led him to the next chapter of his career. Taking part in the 2018 Police Association Surfing Champs in Raglan, Todd noticed that at 1.8 metres and 90kg, the XL-sized hooded towelling poncho Todd received as a souvenir of the event was too small for him. He began researching similar products and looking at samples. When he found what he wanted, he set up Noxen (noxen.co.nz), an online surf and lifestyle clothing business. 

For Todd, what started as a solution to one problem has become a way for him to give back to the community. The brand’s tagline “Ride Every Wave” reminds Todd to ride out life’s ups and downs. A percentage of each sale goes to Lifeline, the mental health and suicide prevention hotline, and a further percentage of sales revenue is donated to other charitable causes.

Todd continues to be open about his mental health, both on the Noxen website and at speaking engagements. He acknowledges that his experiences changed his ability to manage things the way he used to. “I’ll never be fully back,” says Todd. “I’ll always have anxiety and depression, but I can manage it, and now I have an opportunity to pay it forward.”

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WHERE TO GET HELP

Sometimes it helps to know someone is listening and that you don’t have to face your problems alone.

0800 LIFELINE

Youthline 0800376633

Free text 234, email talk@youthline.co.nz or online chat.

What’s for dinner

Virtually every Kiwi in the country has heard of My Food Bag and recognises its public face, Nadia Lim. In the past five years, the company has produced 45 million meals; it’s New Zealand’s third-largest food retailer, and has changed the way many of us shop for and prepare our meals.

WORDS ANDY TAYLOR / PHOTOS GARTH BADGER

My Food Bag’s ‘nude food’ concept has changed the way many of us eat, making healthy, low-salt, preservative-free meals filled with fresh ingredients easy peasy.

What many of us don’t know is that its creator, Cecilia Robinson, had been there, done that. She’s also co-founder of the groundbreaking and successful Au Pair Link, another company that altered the way a traditional service was delivered while changing lives along the way. Having achieved all this in just 10 short years, it’s easy to see why Cecilia has been dubbed ‘New Zealand’s greatest entrepreneur’ by Theresa Gattung, ex Telecom chief executive and frequent flyer on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in International Business list.

Cecilia’s journey began a long, long way from New Zealand. “Sweden is a nice place to grow up,” she says of her birthplace. “It’s quite different from New Zealand, though, and the winters can be very demoralising. It’s still a very nice place to be, but New Zealand is just such a fantastic place, with beautiful beaches and a safe environment in which to bring up children.”

Which brings us to Papamoa, where Cecilia’s husband James’s parents live. “They fell in love with Papamoa, and we love the beach. And nearby, at Bayfair, is the best Farmers in the country – have you seen their toy department?! [When we visit] we go to the beach and playgrounds, then hit the cafés – it’s really just a magical place.

“Sometimes in life, you just don’t know where the road is going to lead you. Driving down last year to see my parents-in-law, we went through Katikati. It brought back so many memories, as  it was where we made one of our first  Au Pair Link placements. Ten years later, I’m driving back through with my own family.”

Cecilia’s first forays into the business world began at an early age. “Back in Sweden, my friends and I used to make things like friendship bracelets, then sell them outside the local supermarket, and I went door-to-door for the World Wildlife Fund. But there was never one particular event that started my interest in being an entrepreneur.

“Every week, my father used to say, ‘When I win Lotto, when I win Lotto, when I win Lotto…’ and it used to drive me crazy – it was part of our everyday vocabulary. It made me think that I didn’t want to be at the mercy of winning Lotto to change my life. So that was actually a good driver. Thanks, Dad!”

Once Cecilia had graduated from selling bracelets at the supermarket, it was the world of law rather than business that caught her eye. Her parents were both academics – “I think they have four or five degrees between them,” she says – so higher education was practically a given. But for someone who clearly likes to see things through to the end, the outcome was surprising.

“I studied in Sweden, New Zealand and the United States, but I still don’t have
a degree,” says Cecilia. “James jokes that I’m a law-school dropout in three countries, which is true. But on our first date, we talked about financial freedom and making your own fortune, about business and thinking about things differently.”

James’s name pops up frequently in conversation with Cecilia. They’re not only life partners, but also business partners, and joint CEOs of My Food Bag. While Cecilia has been described as a “serial entrepreneur with sass”, James brings his own skill set to the table, running the marketing, IT and finance teams of both My Food Bag and Au Pair Link. Mixing a personal relationship with business has been the undoing of many couples, but not  so the Robinsons, who seem to positively thrive on it.

“Who would you rather be in business with than the person you know the best, and trust and love the most?” says Cecilia. “And when the leadership culture is collaborative like ours, it makes a huge difference to the business. So although we do separate the various parts of the business, we also spend a lot of time providing feedback to each other. We work very collaboratively and respect each other professionally. In fact, I think the collaboration within the My Food Bag team has been one of the key reasons
we’ve been so successful.”

The couple’s first meeting and the intertwined lives that ensued sound like pure serendipity. “I’d been working as an au pair in the United States while I studied, but decided I wanted to work in New Zealand instead, because my brother was working there,” says Cecilia. “He had a dinner party to welcome me to New Zealand – and that’s where I met James, on my first night in the country.” The rest, as they say, is history.

An exciting new chapter in their story began in 2006, with the launch of their first major project together: Au Pair Link. “We were living in a little two-bedroom apartment in Auckland’s CBD, working and studying full-time, but also thinking about how much I’d got out of being an au pair – it had been such an amazing experience,” recalls Cecilia. “I gained so much from it that I thought other people would want to do it too. James was really supportive, so we started a website, and suddenly we were getting phone calls at seven in the morning from all over the country. We thought, ‘Well, there must be something here, because people really need us.’”

There certainly was, and people certainly did. Au Pair Link was New Zealand’s first dedicated au pair agency that made sure au pairs were safe and fully supported by a national network – a far cry from the previous system of classified ads and word of mouth. The company has grown to employ 40 full-time staff and has placed thousands of au pairs throughout Australasia.

“It was very challenging, because we were starting with something that was very much a cottage industry, and we realised that to succeed, we had to take a new approach,” says Cecilia. “Instead of saying an au pair was someone who just appeared in your home to look after your child, we saw them as licensed childcare providers who add to your child’s education. And that was a game-changer. Within five years, we were one of the largest companies of our kind in the world.”

Having revolutionised the au pair scene and reset the horizons of several thousand young Kiwis who suddenly had an international influence in their homes, you’d think that it was time for the credits to roll and the Robinsons and Au Pair Link to settle into a stately rhythm that would see them through the rest of their careers. But no – luckily for New Zealand, Cecilia got bored with pottering around the house.

“We were travelling in Europe and saw a model there similar to what would become My Food Bag,” she says. “I have a husband who loves to eat but not to cook, and it struck me that there would be a lot of people in similar situations. Back in New Zealand, I was on maternity leave from Au Pair Link. I’d done all the ironing and everything I could do around the house, and I got bored really fast, so I said to James that I wanted to explore the possibilities around this new idea. I did all the research, then started on the business plan. And within four hours of finishing it, I was in labour. So I kind of say that My Food Bag and our son, Tom, are twins.”

As if bringing two new creations into the world in one day wasn’t enough, just four weeks later, the Robinsons presented Cecilia’s business plan to Theresa Gattung and the rest of the Au Pair Link board. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with Theresa particularly impressed and keen to get the project moving forward as soon as possible.

“Theresa came up to me straight after I’d presented it and said, ‘This is what I’ve been waiting for – so what’s next?’” says Celcilia. “We had a month-old baby, 1000 au pairs throughout New Zealand and so many existing business obligations to deal with already, but it just seemed so right, so we reached out to Nadia [Lim] and her husband, Carlos [Bagrie]. They came in thinking we were pitching something around Au Pair Link or baby food.

“Nadia and Carlos were on their way to the airport for a three-week trip to Europe and jumped on their flight straight afterwards, so we heard nothing for 24 hours. And then they said they were in! We assembled the team in November and by March [2013] we were in the market. That was a pretty intense summer.”

Understatements occur frequently in conversation with Cecilia. But if she makes it sound easy, it wasn’t. Bringing the My Food Bag vision to life required the team to master a raft of technical challenges and inject the kind of human touch that would get people out of their routines and see them up for some chang e in the kitchen. And, of course, the food had to be fantastic too.

“It’s complicated,” says Cecilia. “There are so many variations involved. But we have a really great team and what people don’t realise is that each recipe gets tested multiple times. It’s an amazing process and our suppliers come in and show us new cuts of meat or new products that we can utilise. We want to be cutting edge but still provide meals people will love and that become new family favourites.”

Like other new business models – think Uber, for example – My Food Bag has been described as ‘disruptive’, but unlike many others, it’s actually profitable. “My Food Bag is incredibly disruptive, because five years in, we were the third-largest food retailer in New Zealand,” says Cecilia. “Actually, that was probably true after two or three years – it happened so fast.

“For us, it’s been incredibly powerful to be part of giving people new options, which is what we did with Au Pair Link: instead of just having someone in your home or on a trip helping with your children, which was the old model, we changed that and added the education factor. So with My Food Bag, it was again taking an old model and making
it brand new, and when people ask how My Food Bag happened so fast and became so successful so quickly, they forget the many years that we spent reaching that point.”

What’s also not immediately apparent about My Food Bag, but becomes clear if you spend any time with Cecilia, is that beyond disruptive technologies, recipe development and delivery schedules, the company is incredibly people-focused. Staff are encouraged to bring their children to work, and virtually scolded for not leaving early if they have to pick them up.

“For us, it’s always been about people and then letting the numbers and business fall out of that,” says Cecilia. “And when I say ‘people’, I mean our team, suppliers and customers – we start with them. Leading in that way has given us great clarity about how we make decisions. We bring our kids into work and make sure people take the time to do what they need to do around their kids, so we’re people first and on the business side second. We’re mums and dads, we’re husbands, we’re wives, and we’re friends before we become business people. And that builds a lot of love and trust both inside and outside the company.”

Perhaps the most remarkable part of all in the Robinsons’ story is that by the time you read this, the couple will have stepped back from the empire they’ve created and handed over the leadership to new CEO, Kevin Bowler. During our interview, Kevin calls Cecilia. She asks UNO to stop recording, then excitedly congratulates him on his new role and invites him to dinner with James, Theresa, Nadia and Carlos, and to a photo shoot to announce the appointment to the press. “We’re a ‘check your suit at the door’ kind of company,” she tells him. “Just wear something relaxed.”

It may surprise some that Cecilia and James are willing to step down from something they’re so passionate about and that’s going so well. “One of the biggest drivers for entrepreneurs is financial freedom,” says Cecilia. “It’s like being in the Olympics. You prepare and train, and then you run the race and win and achieve everything you wanted –
but what then? You keep running?! And that’s what approaching this change was like for us.

“Once the company had reached the point it’s at now, we had financial freedom and did a lot of things that we’d dreamt of, but the key thing we wanted was the freedom of more time. So James and I said that we’d give it 12 months after we partly sold to Waterman Capital [in late 2016], get stability for our team and ensure that we were delivering, and then our time was done.

“Finding the right person to come in has been something we’ve taken very seriously, and we’ll be continuing in governance roles because we have a real passion for our people, our foodies and our products,” continues Cecilia. “But basically, we are retiring. There are people who achieve financial freedom and want to keep working, to keep running, but that’s not us – we want to use that freedom to spend time with our kids.”

Retiring. It’s hard to believe that the energy and dynamism of the half-Swedish family Robinson will fit the retired life, but they have redefined the way we eat, so they may well  redefine retirement, too.

Jake Millar: life in the fast lane

At 22 years old, Jake Millar from Greymouth in the South Island has interviewed some of the most influential business people on the planet: The CEO of Fonterra, the CEO of Walmart, the CEO of Tesla, founders of billion-dollar startups, and godfather of entrepreneurs everywhere, Sir Richard Branson. He has interviewed around 500 people over the last four years. 

Jake sold his first business, Oompher, to the New Zealand Government at 19 years old. His second start-up, Unfiltered, has just celebrated its second birthday from New York, where Jake's now living as he launches into the States.

Jake has bottled his ability to get people to talk to him and turned it into a business. Unfiltered gives you access to the stories and wisdom of some of the world's most successful businessmen and women. Interviewed by Jake, they share what they've learned, inspiring others to achieve greatness. Each interview is about an hour-long, and is recorded on video. Jake's done around 500 of them, and they are all published on unfiltered.tv. 

Before he'd launched Unfiltered with his co-founder, Yuuki Ogino, Jake had secured commercial partnerships with Bayleys, Craigs Investments, Price Waterhouse Coopers.

In July this year, I went to Unfiltered Live, held at Auckland Museum. It was slick. Hundreds of people round the country came to hear Jake and other speakers such as the Prime Minister and Sir Graham Henry.

Dapper, neat, scrupulously organised, bespectacled, and always smiling, there's a touch of the #geekchic about Jake. But his old-school, gentlemanly manners give him an air of panache. Jake wraps up lots of information neatly and tightly in short spaces of time. He has got used to sharing the two-minute version of his story to promote Unfiltered. In an interview with an American TV channel that broadcasts live from the New York Stock Exchange, the presenters start off smiling politely at the rather young, earnest-looking fellow in front of them. But after a few minutes, their practiced, generic welcome is slightly askew, and their jaws hang a little loose.

A LOSS

When Jake was 15 years old, his father, Rod Miller, died in a plane crash over Fox Glacier, along with nine other people. Four of them were Jake's friends. Rod owned a sky-diving business. The crash occurred on the same day as the first earthquake hit Christchurch. John Key travelled across the South Island paying his respects to the victims and visiting affected families.
Afterwards, Jake wrote to the Prime Minister thanking him for coming to the crash site, and asking him for words of advice about his future. John Key responded with a personal and encouraging note, and visited the 15-year-old at his home in Greymouth. It was a bright moment amongst all that horror.

Jake says, " At seven years old, John Key lost his father, yet went on to achieve his dreams. I thought, 'If he can do it, so can I.' And I was inspired by the kindness and humanity he had shown in his leadership of our country at that awful time."

SCHOOL

From a young age, Jake has worked hard. "I set myself the goal of being head boy of Christchurch Boys' High School (CBHS) and head boy of Adams House. The two positions hadn't been held at the same time in 11 years." He achieved both those goals in 2012.

Whilst at school, Jake organised quite the line-up of speakers for assembly at CBHS: Rob Fyfe, then CEO of Air New Zealand, Rhys Darby from Flight of the Conchords, and Bill English, then Minister of Finance. Photos of baby-faced Jake honing his interviewing skills with these national heavyweights are shockingly recent. Rob Fyfe is now one of a few experienced CEOs who sit on the board of Unfiltered. He says "I have known Jake since he was 16, and he is one of the most inspiring young New Zealanders I have met in my business career.”

As he headed towards his final terms, Jake read Richard Branson's autobiography, Losing My Virginity. It ignited in him a passion for business. He could see how fun and exciting it was.

But career advice at school was woefully lacking. "You were asked what you thought you'd like to do, and were handed a few pamphlets. Where was the advice from someone who'd been there and done it? What was the best way to get started in a particular job? Where was the motivation to get out there and achieve great things? There wasn't any."

And so, turning down a $40,000 scholarship to study law at Otago University, Jake left school and founded his first business, Oompher. The product was what he had wanted a year earlier: careers advice – from the top of the pile. He interviewed people leading their industry, and invited them to share their wise words, asking questions like, 'What does it take to succeed in your industry?' The videos of the interview were published online. Within two months of launching, Jake started to negotiate with the Government who wanted to buy it. Six months later, in mid-2015, they did.

30-YEAR PLAN

If this all sounds very neat and well-thought-out, that's because it is. This isn't a series of lucky events. Jake plays the longest of games. He has a 30-year plan. That's pretty hard to fathom in our era of instant gratification. "Sir Michael Hill has a 30-year plan. He refers to it regularly. And he advised me to do the same. You have to think aspirationally to make your plan. I  thought about what it is that I wanted from life. Here's my list: family, fun, friends, finances, fortune (good health/luck), influence, and, above all else, total freedom. Whenever I need to make a decision in my life, I look at whether it will bring me closer to those goals. If it doesn't, then I say no."

RAISING CAPITAL

In 2016 he needed to raise $1.2 million to take Unfiltered to the States. "I was confident we'd be able to raise the funds, but I was humbled by the calibre of our investors. Many of them are friends I have made over the years." Some friends! Kevin Roberts, ex-CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi; and Sara Tetro, founder of 62 Models and Talent, are some of the A-list line-up of investors. Having them onboard creates a snowball effect: they bring in friends and contacts who are then willing to be interviewed for Unfiltered.

We meet Jake in between San Francisco and Fiji, and find out how he secures interviews with such big names, and commercial relationships without having launched his business. And what motivated such grit and drive.

Jenny: Happy birthday Unfiltered! Two years old in November. And now you have launched into America. How did it differ to your launch in New Zealand?

Jake: Probably the main thing is the size of the market. In New Zealand we are just four and a half million people. It's quite easy to target who you want and truly reach that market, whereas in America there are 320-odd million people, so it's hard reach them all. In America, we have repositioned our entire business. We have really focused on one very specific market as opposed to focusing on everyone. Also, we've targeted New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco at this stage, not the whole country. We've picked out places where we feel we are going to get the most traction.

Jenny: One of the most incredible things about Oompher and Unfiltered, is your ability to get people to come and talk to you. How have you done that?

Jake:  The main word is persistence. We just go, and go, and go, and go. When we reach out to new people to interview, whether it's Sir Richard Branson, or Ashton Kucher, or Sarah Blakely, we just hammer them. I know that sounds aggressive, but you have to be because there are so many journalists and media agencies competing for that attention. Quite often we'll follow someone up 15, 16, 17 times before we get the interview.

Jenny: How do you know when to stop?

Jake: It depends. If I am not getting a reply at all, then I'll probably carry on. If someone's not interested, they'll usually come back straight away and say so. So if they don't send that reply, then you can probably always push harder. A founder of a very successful and well-known company recently came back after four or five emails from us with a one-word response: 'no.' That was it. That's enough for us, we know he's not interested right now. But that doesn't mean I'll give up for the rest of my life.

Jenny: As well as being persistent, you need to be good at reading people, and likable. How did those attributes develop?

Jake: Growing up, I spent a lot of time around adults. My parents never got babysitters or went away on holiday together without my brother and me. We did everything together. So, if there was a dinner party, we would always be there. From about four or five years old. I don't think my parents ever went on holiday together when we were young. We were always together as a family, so I spent lots of time, listening to adults and watching how they react to each other.

Jenny: Oompher and Unfiltered are quite similar businesses. What made you start another so similar to Oompher?

Jake: I really wanted to build a valuable business, and Oompher had taught me lots of important lessons about target markets, product/market position, and how to commercialise a product. I knew I wanted to start another business, and I was tempted to start something completely different, like manufacturing or software. Unfiltered was similar to what I'd been doing, and I knew how hard it was to commercialise media. But I’d done about 30 interviews with people after Oompher – which I was passionate about – so I decided to give it a crack, and Unfiltered was born.

Jenny: Before you launched Unfiltered, you had some big names signed up as customers. How did you know, at 19 years old, how to pitch your idea to them?

Jake: Partly from experience with Oompher. Our business model was to get companies to sponsor the content, with their branding at the back of us as we filmed. A kind of traditional advertising model. Also, I really believed we were solving an important problem and would have an audience of young, aspiring entrepreneurs. I knew that market was really valuable to these companies.

The person who probably helped me the most was my accountant from PwC, Scott McLeaver. We ‘white-boarded’ the whole business, how it could make money, and what commercial partnerships might look like. He gave some great advice. As a teenager owning a new business, it was invaluable to get that kind of support.

Jenny: How do you make the cut to be interviewed on Unfiltered?

Jake: There aren’t really any criteria. We look at who's hot in the media, who our subscribers are pitching to us, saying, 'I want to learn from that person.' And we look at why they might be relevant: maybe they've sold or founded a company, or they are growing fast globally, or expanding internationally.

Equally, it could be someone in whom there's hardly any public interest, but we discover they have an amazing story. Brendan Lindsay from Cambridge would be perfect example. Prior to him selling Sistema Plastics for $660 million, nobody really knew who he was. He'd kept his story very private. He's very humble. We love breaking big stories like Brendan's.

Jenny: You’ve interviewed a number of people from the Bay and Waikato on Unfiltered. Chris Liddell, former CFO at Microsoft and General Motors, is from Matamata. Theresa Gattung, ex-CEO of Telecom, is from Rotorua. John Lord, founder of LivWell (Colorado's biggest, legal cannabis dealer), is from Te Awamutu. And of course, your good friend Nick Mowbray, co-CEO of Zuru Toys, who's from Tokoroa. What do you think it is about those provincial areas that's produced such successful people?

Jake: There are a huge number of really successful New Zealanders globally who are relatively unknown, here. I believe the CEO of Walmart USA, Greg Foran, is from Hamilton too. I think coming from a small town, you are always hustling, trying to get ahead. When you grow up in a big city, everything's there. When you come from a small place, there's always something to reach for. For instance, my journey started in Greymouth on the west coast of the South Island. From there I went to boarding school in Christchurch, then I moved to Auckland, and now New York. It's called step migration. People generally move from a smaller place to somewhere slightly bigger. If you are born in the big city, everything's there. You probably don't know what to aspire to next.

Jenny: You wrote a list of 21 things you'd learned at 21 years old, and said that friendships were one of the most important things in life. But you have also spoken about not seeking out friendships when you were at school. What changed?

Jake: At secondary school I was very goal-driven. That made me different from most of the boys there, and I felt they weren't very tolerant of people who did things differently. I liked playing badminton, wanted to become head boy, and wanted to start a business. But what was expected was to sit around in the common room, talking about rugby and cricket. When you are at school, there isn't really much you can do about that, because you are stuck in that environment.

That was one of the deciding factors in leaving and starting my own business. I knew that if I  studied law, I would end up in a law firm answering to a boss I might not like, trying to get further in my career with people I didn't really want to be spending time with. If you have your own business, you get to decide who you spend time with. I was able to start working with people I really liked, and start building the deep and meaningful relationships that were missing at school.

Jenny: Immigration to the Bay of Plenty is strong, and many of our imports are looking to run a national or global business from here. What advice can you give them?

Jake: Utilise technology in every way you can. Today it's possible to run a global business from any small marketplace. You need to attract the right talent, and be prepared to travel. Just remember, everything's possible.

Jenny: And finally, who was the hardest person to track down?

Jake: That would have to be Sir Richard Branson. He's a very difficult person to talk to, because so many people are trying to interview someone like him. When I finally got his email address, I sent him a personal letter, and he agreed to an interview. Even after that it took persistence to make sure it happened. Then, all of sudden, I was waiting in our studio and being told that Sir Richard had just arrived.

To see the rest of Jake's interview, giving his million-dollar advice for starting up a business, and talking about his friendship with ex-Warriors owner, Eric Watson, and his Lifeline fundraising dinner at the Coatesville mansion, watch below:

Teenage Entrepreneurs of Tauranga: an artist, a Youtuber, a knife sharpener, and a photographer

Each of the teenagers featured in this article is self-employed, earns money using their own skills, manages their own income, and in some cases, earn more than many adults.

WORDS JENNY RUDD PHOTOS QUINN O’CONNELL

If Hope, Jared, Tom and Rose are anything to go by, the future of our country looks as rosy as their youthful cheeks. Gone are the days when teenagers wanted to get qualified and get out, looking to the big smoke and high-flying executive jobs. This new generation of entrepreneurs have clearly learned plenty from their parents, many of whom moved here when their children were young, and helped the Bay of Plenty achieve its current status as the highest-performing area in the Regional Economic Scoreboard.

HOPE MCCONNELL, ARTIST, 19

“My earliest memory is my bedroom in Hamilton; my mum had painted the galaxy all over the walls and ceiling. She used to be a professional artist, and has always encouraged me. I have a very close relationship with my mum.

“Much of my work is painting commissioned portraits. People often buy them as gifts and I get lots of work through my Facebook Page. I am working with watercolours at the moment, but use lots of different mediums to get the look a client wants.”

Most of Hope’s portraits are on A4-sized paper. Her work rate is exemplary. Every time I visited her she had fresh work up in her work space. There is an ordered uniformity to the presentation of her work and her range of skill is incredible, I thought some of the work she showed me belonged to other artists, they were so varied.

“As well as the portraits I have two other ventures on the go; a website which should go live in April – it’s called TwoBrokeDesigners – and will feature young designers on the blog and insights into student-design life. We’ll sell prints and artwork on there by little-known artists and designers.

“The other project is designing a range of t-shirts. My parents have fostered in us a desire to strive for excellence and help others. We have a family rule to set goals to raise money for different charities that we all choose together. The proceeds from the t-shirts will go to young girls trapped in sex slavery.”

At the age of ten, Hope moved to Tauranga with her brother, sister and parents. “I was close to my textiles teacher who encouraged me to enter the Young Designer Awards. I made a rainbow dress and was placed second, so was invited to fly to Christchurch with my mum. We stayed in a hotel together, went on tours and rode trams. It was incredibly glamorous and adventurous for a ten-year-old from the Waikato.”

Hope’s work ethic is enough to make me slightly embarrassed about my own. At 13, she entered a fashion-stylist competition in Girlfriend magazine. “We had to send in a mood board of our fashion ideas as the entry. I was selected as one of four finalists round the country and was given Bayfair vouchers to spend each month and compile different looks. Because I was so young, my mum took me to Bayfair and helped me photograph the looks for the magazine.

“I was selected as the competition winner by Girlfriend readers. It was one of the most exciting achievements in my childhood and the team at Girlfriend were really supportive, offering me opportunities in styling. I wasn’t old enough then to decide on what I wanted to do, but I know now how to forge a creative career for myself, and I’m loving every bit of it.”

facebook.com/HopeMcConnellArtandDesign

JARED SHAW, YOUTUBE BROADCASTER, 17

Jared has two YouTube channels: The Big 10 and The Gamer’s Joint. From his home in Papamoa he shares with his mum and step-father, these two channels have been watched 46 million times. Yes, 46 million. I bet you’ve stopped reading and reached for your phone to check him out.

The Big 10 features list videos, the most popular being ten extremely strange body modifications which has attracted seven million views (only watch that one if you have a fairly solid constitution). His real passion, and the channel he has spent most time developing is The Gamer’s Joint, which is devoted almost entirely to the study of one video game: Kingdom Hearts.

“When I started my channel in 2010, there were a few others around reviewing Kingdom Hearts, but none were particularly big. For the first few years, uploading videos on my channel was just a hobby but by 2014, it really started to kick off and my subscriber base was growing steadily.

The Gamer’s Joint’s popularity is down to two things: consistency (Jared works 10am to 8pm every weekday and uploads two videos per day to The Gamers Joint), and personality.

“There’s lots of planning involved with each video, and I usually do it a day or two in advance: I mix things up with a couple of comedy skits, live streaming, analysis, reviews and revealing hidden info inside the game. I’m known for losing my shit and raging at the game. Each video needs to be planned, researched, the script written and recorded, then edited and uploaded.

“Just before I started to do this full time, I went to a gamer’s convention in Boston where I chatted to different networks and channel owners. It is possible to self-monetise your channel, but there are bigger benefits in signing up with a network; you earn money each time a video is watched, and networks have lots of information and help on how to increase your number of views and can help with copyright issues.

“I already had a contract with TGN before the convention, but they offered me a better deal and I became one of their VIP channels. My income increased immediately and on my return, I decided I wanted to leave school to concentrate solely on my YouTube channels.

“I had to pitch it to my mum – it’s not easy trying to convince your mum that leaving school to play video games professionally is a good idea, but I have my NCLA Level 2 already, so if it didn’t work out, I could still go to university. I think she was surprised when I showed her how much I was earning from YouTube. I treat it as a business – I have an accountant, as I’m paid in US dollars, and I want to make sure all my tax is in order and that I’m saving.”

The success of Jared’s gaming channel has far exceeded any of his peers who also review Kingdom Hearts. He has about 125,000 subscribers, which puts him in the top rankings of gaming channels in New Zealand.

“It’s hard to know what you want to do at our age, we are often asked what we’ll do in the future, but how can you make a decision with no insight? I’m extremely lucky to love my job so much at my age. It doesn’t feel like a job at all, it just feels like fun.”

youtube.com/user/thegamersjoint

TOM HOFFART, KNIFE-SHARPENER AND TOOL REFURBISHER, 13

Learning a trade seems old school in a digital world, and Tom’s trade dates back to, well, about two and a half million years. “I have always loved knives. I got my first when I was three from a family friend. That same friend gave me a machete when I turned nine. Each time I got a knife, I got a box of plasters.”

Tom offers a knife-sharpening service with delivery. “If a client lives close by, I’ll cycle to their house to pick up and deliver their knives or tools. If it’s any further, we arrange a central point in town to meet.”

“I started my business because I’ve always loved making and refurbishing old tools and knives, and I have an excellent workshop at home with equipment I have bought and been kindly given by my uncle in Matamata. He and my grandfather taught me some good knife sharpening skills too.

“At the moment I am reinvesting most of the money back into the business to buy better equipment. My Facebook page and newly purchased cell phone have significantly increased my customer base and workload.

“I keep a ledger to record my income and expenses, and have spoken to the tax office – there are some generous tax brackets for school pupils. I love my work – I have never seen myself working in an office when I’m older.”

“A few months ago I went to buy a knife I’ve had my eye on for a while. My mum said ‘Why do you need another knife? You already have so many.’ I replied, ‘I could ask you the same question about shoes’.”

facebook.com/NeighbourhoodKnifeGuy

ROSE MCMAHON, 15, PHOTOGRAPHER

There is no doubt that Rose’s homeschooling has been a huge contributor to her incredible success as a professional photographer.

“I got into photography about three years ago. A family friend lent me her camera for the winter, while the wedding season was quiet. When the time came to return it, I asked her how much it cost so I could get one myself. $5,000. I thought my world would end. I cried myself to sleep.

“I thought, ‘I’m not having this,’ and looked around online until I found something similar second hand. It was still way out of a 12 year old’s reach, so I rang the seller. He was a professional photographer who’d started at eight years old. He gave me a discount, so I gathered all my Christmas and birthday money, both past and future, and bought it.

“At the beginning, I offered to take photos for free. I did the Zespri Head Office Christmas party, which led to paid work; I have photographed weddings and portraits for people at the party. I have now shot in every major wedding venue in the Bay of Plenty.”

As well as using her own initiative and hard work to learn her craft, including building a website, marketing her work and managing her administration, she has sought out guidance from other well established photographers.

“A couple of years ago, I found it very difficult taking pictures of people as I didn’t have enough confidence telling groups of adults what to do. Maree Wilkinson, one of the Bay’s top wedding photographers, took me with her on photo shoots and showed me how to get over that stumbling block.

“It’s useful being young when running your own business. You have much less fear than adults. I don’t worry so much about things going wrong, I just work out how to fix them myself. And because I’m homeschooled I can spend lots of time practising and improving.

Rose is in hot demand and is well-respected by her peers; our photographer for this shoot, Quinn O’Connell, borrowed one of her lenses and talked shop with her throughout. The girl can certainly hold her own. And she is ambitious.

“The biggest job I’ve had so far is a stills photographer on a movie, recording what’s going on behind the scenes. In fact, I’ve just been approached to do the same job on another movie. I’d like to get into directing movies so it’s been a great opportunity.

“Although there are lots of perks to being a teenager in an adult industry – people are extremely generous-spirited towards me – there are downsides too. I have to pay someone to drive me to my jobs until I’m old enough to legally drive.”

rosemcmahon.com