Between Two Beers Podcast

As a teenager, Brad Iles was a world schools golf champion, and Michael Campbell called him one of the best talents to come out of New Zealand in a long time.

At 20, he fell off the back of a golf cart in the US, suffered a life-threatening head injury and woke from a coma to be told he might never play again.

Within 18 months he was leading the Australian PGA alongside Cambo, with his dad on the bag. Seven years on tour followed, then he booked a flight home and never went back.

This is the story of starting again: a minimum-wage warehouse job in Queenstown, glassy to shareholder in a five-venue hospitality group, and the inflatable park that sparked the golf simulator business he runs today.

In this episode:

• 14 houses by age 14, and how having no friends made him a golfer
• His dad’s chart: scratch by 16
• Why Kiwis flush it on the range and Americans out-golf them on the course
• Hearing your handicap from the sound of the strike
• Life on tour: 100 cheeseburgers, a shank through a hotel door, and why it gets lonely
• The putt for a quarter of a million dollars
• Sleep seizures 24 years on, losing his licence, and what the bus taught him about slowing down
• His best parenting advice: let them be kids

Between Two Beers is proudly brought to you by One New Zealand. We believe that One NZ connects New Zealand, while Between Two Beers connects New Zealanders. And together, we are NZ’s most trusted connection platform.

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We reflect on Becki Ross' beautiful send-off at Lake Karāpiro, hearing her mum mention Between Two Beers in her speech, and what happens for guests long after the mics go off.

Plus: the post about a “90s childhood” street that struck a chord, and why who you live next to might matter more than the house you buy.

Char spends two days off-grid with Ladies Who Venture with Gemma McCaw. A five-year-old who out-lasted her big brothers in the Hanmer Springs cold plunge. What poker teaches you about business. And Sammy’s once-a-year birthday coffee.

We also catch up with Suzanne McFadden, lead interviewer for Reflections, our private family documentaries. She talks about the 50-year marriage that still had a secret, the Swiss farmer who sang to his mother on camera, and the one thing almost everyone says matters most. Find out more at reflections.life.

And a tease for next week: a guest with more than 100 games for the All Blacks, telling parts of his story for the first time.

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This one’s an adults-only episode - sexual themes and language throughout, so maybe not for the school drop-off. 18+.

Melissa Vranjes is a certified holistic sex and relationship coach, and she joins us to tackle the stuff most couples never figure out how to talk about.

Steve plays the sacrificial lamb on mismatched libido, and Melissa reframes the whole thing: it’s not a mismatch, it’s a discrepancy - just a difference, like one of you loving mushrooms and the other hating them.

From there: why exhaustion kills desire in the early parenting years, the one tool she gives every couple in a sexless relationship, the weekly relationship check-in she swears by, what “choreplay” actually is and why the mental load is foreplay, and a no-holds-barred listener Q&A on everything from finishing too fast to dead bedrooms to keeping things alive after years together.

Plus Melissa’s own story - seven years on superyachts to a workshop in Bali that changed her life - and a “sex lore” segment settling the myths you’ve always wondered about.

Between Two Beers is proudly brought to you by One New Zealand. We believe that One NZ connects New Zealand, while Between Two Beers connects New Zealanders. And together, we are NZ's most trusted connection platform.

Steve and Seamus are proud to be dressed by Barkers Clothing.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the thing holding back your business - and your life - isn’t a strategy problem, but a story you’ve been telling yourself?

This week, business coach Di Foster sits down with Steve to pull apart the quiet narratives running his days: the belief that being constantly connected matters more than being present with his kids, the “survival mode” that kept him buried in the business, and the story about his own body that nearly had him on the sidelines.

It’s an honest, practical conversation about time, presence, persistence, and what actually changes when you rewrite the script.

In this episode:

• Why Steve rebuilt his mornings around the hours that matter most
• The real reason he can’t put his phone down at home - and the simple rule to fix it
• Moving from survival mode to growth mode, and the one hire that changed everything
• How a shift in mindset - not circumstances - changed the story he’d been telling himself about his body
• Why “persistence” might be both his greatest strength and his biggest blind spot
• Reflections: the new venture capturing the stories of families and the businesses they’ve built

This episode is proudly sponsored by Xero - one platform for accounting, payroll, payments and reporting, so your business stays in control as it grows. Start your free trial by searching Xero today. Terms apply.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Content warning: This episode contains frank discussion of addiction, depression, suicide and self-harm, and may not be suitable for all listeners. Please take care while listening. Support details are at the end of this description.

Mike King is one of the most recognisable figures in New Zealand. Comedian, broadcaster, mental health campaigner, former New Zealander of the Year: he's been all of them, and he's spent the last few years at the centre of a national conversation about how we look after our young people.

But the man behind the headlines is rarely the one the public gets to see. In this wide-ranging kōrero, King sits down for the longest and most personal conversation he's given in years.

He traces the whole arc: a childhood spent certain he'd never be good enough, the delayed path through kitchens and the Merchant Navy, the comedy career that made him a household name, and the rock bottom that nearly ended everything.

He talks with unusual honesty about getting clean, the moment that made him walk away from comedy for good, and how a late-night radio slot became the beginning of I Am Hope and Gumboot Friday. Along the way he reflects on the criticism that follows him, the toll of the work, and why he recently stepped back from the charity he built.

Between Two Beers is proudly brought to you by One New Zealand. We believe that One NZ connects New Zealand, while Between Two Beers connects New Zealanders. And together, we are NZ's most trusted connection platform.

Steve and Seamus are proud to be dressed by Barkers Clothing.

If anything in this episode brings things up for you, support is available.

Need to talk? Free call or text 1737 any time, 24 hours a day, to speak with a trained counsellor.

Free counselling for young people is available through Gumboot Friday — http://iamhope.org.nz

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Content note: this contains a tribute to our friend and former guest Becki Ross and touches on assisted dying - please listen with care.

In this one: we open by accidentally reading each other's minds (one name, one count of three - you'll hear it). Steve buys a TV with five kids in tow and zero research, we settle who actually owes who a dump-run favour, and we take the Almighty crew on a thirsty tour of Hamilton - the Gardens' new medieval garden, Soul Bowl's new digs, and a Duck Island ice cream we had to eat on camera.

Since we last had her on the show, our friend Becki Ross has passed away, choosing assisted dying on her own terms. We sat down to reflect on her, to read her final message, and to hold onto what she gave all of us - "live your life to the fullest, find those silver linings and love your people hard." Thank you, Becki.

We get into why we've stayed apolitical for nearly seven years and won't put a sitting politician in the chair, run this week's between two bets, and look ahead to a huge run: Nathan Fa’avae and the Gilbert Enoka re-release out now.

We end the episode as we reconnect with One NZ Warriors CEO Cam George the morning after the grand final - a season one win short of the big dance, what the day after a loss like that actually looks like, and leading a club that's become the biggest story in the game.

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He's one of New Zealand's greatest ever athletes - 7x Adventure Racing World Championships, a decade unbeaten on the biggest races on the planet, and a record-breaking 1,000-mile paddle down the Yukon. And he's done all of it with a heart condition.

But this conversation goes way past the trophy cabinet. Nathan Fa'avae takes us from a lonely Pasifika kid in 1970s Nelson to the start line of the world's toughest races - and into the moments that actually shaped him: losing his mind after 72 hours without sleep, his outrigger breaking apart 25km out to sea in the dark while leading the World's Toughest Race, and the day his whole world changed on a chairlift when he lost his mum.

Along the way: why he built the biggest adventure race on earth for women, the puddle that sums up how he parents, why he raises his kids to struggle on purpose, and why, for him, success isn't winning - it's freedom.

Between Two Beers is proudly brought to you by One New Zealand. We believe that One NZ connects New Zealand, while Between Two Beers connects New Zealanders. And together, we are NZ's most trusted connection platform.

Steve and Seamus are proud to be dressed by Barkers Clothing.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Di sits down one on one with Seamus for an honest session about the thing he finds hardest: using his voice.

They get into why he defaults to making everyone else okay at his own expense, where that started (being the youngest, and a childhood of "seen and not heard"), and the real cost of staying quiet when speaking up would save time, money and energy.

Then there's the idea Di keeps coming back to: the joy of missing out. Not FOMO, JOMO. Why saying hell yes to what matters means getting comfortable saying "not yet" to everything else, and how Seamus used it to make a call the old version of him never would have.

They finish on a listener question every operator will recognise: how do you know when to leave a full-time salary behind and go all in on your own business? Di walks through exactly how she'd do it, step by step.

This episode is brought to you by Odoo.

New episodes of Accidental Business Owners with Di Foster, out now. Follow wherever you get your podcasts.

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Gilbert Enoka is back with the All Blacks. After 23 years and 304 tests as their mental skills coach - two World Cup wins along the way - he stepped away in 2023, worked with Chelsea and England cricket, and has now returned to the team as leadership and mental performance coach ahead of the 2027 World Cup.

This is a big one, recorded during his time away. The first half is the man: a childhood in an orphanage from 18 months to 12, learning to work and fight, and how being "emotionally malnourished" turned into the skill that made him indispensable - reading a room before anyone said a word.

The second half is the craft: the no-dickheads policy, standards over values, the "human library" of legends built for 2023, how close the All Blacks came to walking away from the haka, and the Gilbertisms - winge up not down, don't take the sausage, wishbone-backbone-funny-bone - he's spent a career distilling.

His book Become Unstoppable is out now.

Between Two Beers is proudly brought to you by One New Zealand. We believe that One NZ connects New Zealand, while Between Two Beers connects New Zealanders. And together, we are NZ's most trusted connection platform.

Steve and Seamus are proud to be dressed by Barkers Clothing.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve reports back from the inaugural Halberg Golf Day at Royal Auckland - a celebrity auction, a plus-handicap playing partner, a 21-under round and a great cause. Meanwhile the office golf simulator is quietly destroying everyone's productivity.

Dave Wood's back on the show, and the boys are stuck in the gap between knowing the right thing to do and actually doing it - see: the kettlebells that have sat in the garage, still boxed, for two weeks. Plus the monthly "life dinner" relationship hack, a big birthday in Fiji, awards season for the team, a debate that'll split your household (sock-sock-shoe-shoe or sock-shoe-sock-shoe?), and a reflection on the response to the Gloria Masters episode.

Heads up - there's a sexologist in the studio next week, so get your questions in.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.