Business Is Boring

On the fourth of July just four years ago today’s guest started a new company in the technology space. Having come out of some of the world’s biggest ICT companies like IBM and Cisco, Mike Jenkins was keen to help use the power of this cloud technology thing to help businesses do better. And look at how it’s gone - today his brainchild The Instillery is working with some of New Zealand’s biggest companies, like Fonterra, through to helping retailers like World run better businesses. He was awarded the emerging ICT leader at the CIO Awards and got the Digital Transformation of the Year gong at the IDC Australasia Awards for their work transforming Fonterra. From starting with a team of three they’ve grown to 30 employees and are just getting started. To talk about the power of the cloud, the effect it is having on business, and how he has used it himself, Mike Jenkins joins the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

About 2 years ago the rent went up on a much loved cookie shop near the Civic in Auckland. Moustache Milk and Cookie Bar was facing a 40% hike. Owner/founder/manager Deanna Yang, a constant presence in the store and online through her energetic, revealing blog that charted the ups and down of business wasn’t going to take this. As an entrepreneur in her early twenties, from a single parent family, young, a woman and a kiwi of Singaporean Chinese descent she had faced a lot of uphill battles so far and she wasn’t going to let this one get her down. She’d baked, invented, shared and given a lot back in her short run in business and used this community as a springboard to a successful $91,000 crowdfund. Even Lorde was keen to #savemoustache. Deanna used this to evolve the business, ditch the OTT rent, fit out a bus and tour the country taking the cookies to the people and now open three stores. All in less than 6 years in business. These goals have all been set and nailed, against the odds and against an environ

On the first week of the job at Coca Cola in 1996, today’s guest was wheeling out coke products from Pizza Hut after they moved to Pepsi. Although just a new sales rep he vowed that one day he’d get Coke back in to the big chain and its sister KFC. The years passed, and Craig Cotton moved up the ranks. He went from sales rep to a manager, into sales operations, marketing and eventually, all the way to General Manager from his shop floor start. And on his last day with the company, 17 years later, Craig and his team made that deal with Restaurant Brands, the biggest single one in Coke NZ’s history. How’s that for a story of growth and dedication? Craig has gone on to be the CEO for the Better Drinks Co, makers of Charlie’s as it went from a small indie to part of the huge Asahi, and then on to Independent Liquor and now, the Innovation Council - where this year’s awards are upcoming and the sector is in good health. Craig Cotton joined Simon to talk about his career and what could be next for innovation. Hos

What do The Evil Dead, Zena, Spartacus and an immersive 80s extravaganza live theater spectacular have in common? If you guessed Rob Tapert, you've got the chocolate fish. It's very exciting to get a chance to talk to a person who's brought about a billion dollars of overseas investment to New Zealand; jobs, he's helped build an industry careers and inspiration for local film and TV. Which is no mean feat, especially when you're doing it on the other side of the world from his native America. that's the kind of extra challenge that Tapert has thrived in and had a track record of pulling off and the latest of these is Pleasure Dome. To find out about what that is and about show business, Rob joined me in conversation in a secret location in West Auckland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we're talking action. The debate is over, it is just fact increasing diversity of gender, background and age in the decision making parts of organisations helps businesses do better. But still, as we've been exploring a lot lately, only one of the NZX top 50 listed companies is run by a woman. And less than twenty per cent of directors on listed boards are women. Still. So it is past the talking and into the action stages. One person driving action is Miranda Burdon, CEO of Global Women. Her organisation has pulled together a 1 Day For Change conference happening on the 19th of September. It's a great way to celebrate Suffrage Day to talk about the how of increasing diversity in organisations with a range of business leaders and heavy hitters from CEOs of our biggest companies like Fonterra and Spark through to ex Prime Minister, Dame Jenny Shipley. They're not mucking about. Miranda Burdon is an award winning exporter, who's built a career in agribusiness, is chair of one of the biggest mushroom produc

Today’s guest has been mentioned at least three times on the podcast for her leadership on some of the biggest topics facing business and society today. Cindy Gallop has become a by-word for changing the ratio in advertising, business and culture, getting diverse perspectives and experiences in terms of gender, ethnicity, background and moving past the stale pale and male. As the leader of BBH New York, Gallop helped build one of the world’s great ad agencies, and since leaving has been a pioneer in sex tech and the global conversation about the effect pornography has been having on young folk. You might have seen her amazing ted talk, you would have seen her quotes on twitter, Cindy is the person that the people I look up to look up to. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Big news this week, with Fairfax NZ, one of the largest and most influential media companies announcing a new name and CEO. Now to be known as Stuff, the company is to be led by Sinead Boucher. The move was very well received from journalists, happy that a fellow journo and someone from the news side of the news business would be in charge. Recently under Sinead, some of the most successful and exciting multi-media work has been coming from the Stuff stable - the Bain murder podcast Black Hands, and the new series The Valley - showing that quality and innovation are working. And Stuff, the website that ate the company, was built with Sinead as Digital editor. All great signs for the bigger business and the workers at Stuff in uncertain media times. To chat about the print business in declining print times, the news biz and her career, CEO Sinead Boucher joined the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every company these days has a lofty goal.  App makers with silly camera filters say they exist to bring humans together. Every company says it is out to change the world and make it a better place, but often, that’s nonsense. Not so for today’s guest.  Professor Steve Henry is the founder and inventor of Kode technology who has worked to make commercialisation and mass application of research in partnership between his company and AUT. His work developed a compound which is now being developed into a potential cure for solid cancers. It’s also in development for products that could be used to prevent people with surgical implants getting infections. And he’s only just getting started with the applications of his technology.  He’s CEO of Kode Biotech- a biotechnology company he’s been building since 1996, taking his research into synthetic molecules and how applying them to cells and surfaces can change the way they interact with their environment. For example coating a cancer cell with a synthetic shape can

You could look at the way work is arranged and decide that it’s something designed by the patriachy to avoid looking after their kids. A more equal society would have work start after school drop off and finish in time to help with the end of day. And that’s just if you have kids. You might also have a life. It’s just one of the ways that work is not really built for the modern age. One person that has done a lot of thinking about the way we could work today, and is helping put it into practice is Kate Wright. Kate’s completed her MBA, looking at new modes of work that reward output and efficiency rather than face time and hours spent. Opening up the way we work opens work to new people, the diversity we are looking to build today. To talk all these thoughts, and the role of mentoring for business, Kate of Business Mentors NZ and business design company Intentio joined the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's guest is a trailblazer in law, business and leadership. Mai Chen, together with Sir Geoffrey Palmer, opened Australasia's first public law specialist firm in 1994, and since then has built a company and record that has resulted in more gongs and top positions than this intro could fit. Here's a few notable ones: New Zealand's Best public law firm a bunch of times, Inaugural Chair of Global Woman, a Director of BNZ, Adjunct Professor at Auckland Uni Law School, and recently the launch chair of Super Diverse Women. To talk the law business, her career and Super Diverse Women, Mai Chen joined the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you want to see the power of great execution, walk into any of the hospitality offerings that our guest today has brought us. You might think a burger is a burger, but that is until you’ve been to Burger Burger. Consistently named a top option in town, their great ingredients, atmosphere, energy and engaged team have made their affordable treat a household name, with half a million plus diners served a year. Before that Mimi Gilmour introduced the Mexico restaurants, growing fast and taking that mix of tacos, fried chicken and fun across many locations to a successful exit. To talk ideas, creativity, execution and big goals delivered, Mimi Gilmour joined the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest has broken new ground, confounded any stereotypes and excelled at every level of business. Leaving school in South Auckland with School Cert, going to be a bank teller, marrying her boyfriend and having a baby at 21. This could be the end of the public life story of many women 40 years ago. What happened instead has been a career leading some of New Zealand’s biggest media companies through some of the biggest landscape changes. Joan Withers has been a CEO of one of the first deregulated radio stations, the CEO of Fairfax in the last glory years of newspapers, and a professional director, with twenty years of governance experience as a board member and chair. Currently the Chair at Mercury and The Warehouse and just recently stepping down from Chair at TVNZ, Joan has a new book out, A Woman’s Place, that is a life story so far and also practical career advice, stories from the frontline and thoughts on that provocative title, A Woman’s Place. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more info

One of the common kind of bleats from this podcast is that as a country we invest too much in unproductive assets like houses and interest payments, and not enough into companies. One of the reasons we are like this is that it actually isn’t that easy to invest in other stuff. In order to get into something like shares there are risks, and also you need to get a diverse range of investments to spread your risk. There are managed funds, full of fees and large sums needed to invest, there is share trading through a bank, but with 30 bucks each brokerage you need to be doing more than about 2000 at a time or else the fees are more than a 6% return. It actually just isn’t the easy. Enter Sharesies! A cool new idea that makes it easy to invest -simply set your industry preference, risk appetite and get started with as little as 50 bucks a go. It aims to increase financial literacy and get more people into good investment practice, and its promise, that I love, is that you don’t need to be rich to have a share port

Today’s guest is a pioneer in organics, sustainable business and has won awards for being the world’s fairest trader. You have definitely sampled his wares, if you’ve enjoyed a fair trade banana, a cola made with actual cola, or a few years back tasted a lemonade sweetened with honey. Chris Morrison was the co-founder of Phoenix organics, when, more than 20 years ago there was no organics industry. He built the business and the category, and then did something remarkable, he not only worked to mentor the next generation of sustainable businesses, but has gone on to reinvent some of our most ubiquitous consumer goods, the banana and the cola. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the big ingredients for business success is other people’s money. Who are these other people and what motivates them? There are stereotypes in pop culture -from Silicon Valley style VCs that unseat founders and are machiavellian - through to the Dragon’s Den approach of omnipotent geniuses bidding to lend their capital and reputations for a big slice of the future pie. Somewhere in the middle is the angel investor -a bit of a smaller scale, earlier stage kind of thing… and to find out what that actually looks like in NZ, Suse Reynolds, Executive Director of the Angel Association joins us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alas, Simon is away this week so we've decided to republish one of our favourite episodes from 2016: fashion Svengali Karen Walker. Their discussion is worth a listen because Karen lays our her philosophy of no compromise and how that's helped build her business into a kind of super brand. As Simon wrote at the time "Karen Walker is not just a significant figure in New Zealand, she is a fixture on the Business of Fashion’s list of the 500 most influential figures in fashion worldwide, the brand’s sunglasses are worn by the world’s most famous stars". To learn what it takes to create a leviathan of a business and brand, listen on. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you like to read and follow the stories of successful people some common themes emerge - never giving up, always persevering, get knocked down and get back up, never take no, feel the fear and do it anyway, fail until you succeed. It sounds ghastly doesn’t it? And it can be; it is hard, emotionally and physically. What does it take to do this - to get the resilience to keep going, to make it. Simon's guest for this episode is Jamie Ford of Foresight Learning. He's an expert in this field, a coach and mentoring resilience to businesses, leaders and sports teams like the Crusaders and the Wallabies. He talked Simon through how resilience is learnt, trained and practiced and not innate, and how you can build your own. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’ve enjoyed a scented candle in glass, perhaps one with a lovely gold foil on the front or with letters artfully arranged you may have been enjoying the fruits of the work of today’s guest, a kiwi that has had great success in international fragrance, an entrepreneur now based in London who has also been a champion for the new wave of kiwi companies. Christopher Yu is the MD of United Perfumes. He went to the UK as a lawyer, fell in love with the luxury world, helped reinvent the world of the scented candle by growing Diptyque and then launching the Cire Trudon and Fornessetti candles. His company works with the world’s biggest brands, and he has also long worked to try to help make NZ a place that an international success could come from, to talk perfume, the UK, and brand New Zealand, Christopher joins us today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Much of what we talk about in entrepreneurship in NZ comes to us from Silicon Valley. Whether its the lean, agile, the series A, the seed round - the terms and actions come out of this place. So it makes a lot of sense that AUT, for their inaugural entrepreneur in residence, have brought to NZ a 30 year veteran and key figure in the valley. You might have heard of some of the firms he has founded, been on the board for, or invested in - Pandora internet radio is one of the better known consumer brands - but there were a raft of companies that pushed forward technology. He also set up Garage Ventures with Guy Kawasaki, the best selling author of Apple Macintosh fame, who popularised their work together. Bill Reichert is in town for a series of events with AUT and we’ve been lucky enough to grab him today to talk about the Valley, VC and entrepreneurship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many small business people get into business to pursue their passion, yet end up spending a lot of time on the admin and accounts, and the salt in the wound is that this can also be wildly expensive black hole to throw hours, dollars and tears down. It’s a pain-point alright. And where there's pain there’s profit to be had. Enter Beany, a company that has come in to ride the wave of disruption currently hitting accounting services. They are adding their own push by offering a service that, for a low fixed fee, connects small businesses with their accountants and to work in the cloud. They're providing great professional services efficiently and cheaply, and allowing new ways of working both for the accountants and the businesspeople. The CEO Sue De Bievre braved the Spinoff stairs to talk Simon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices