This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Stephanie McKee Wright, founder of Epic People and an HR and leadership development consultant with 30 years of experience.

Stephanie spent decades in senior HR roles across public and private sectors before her company was acquired by a global and the job she had built for herself disappeared overnight. The creativity was gone, the autonomy was gone, and she decided it was time to go too.

She started from what she calls a standing position. No clients, no website, no product. Just 30 years of knowledge and enough savings to give herself a runway. Ten months in, she is still figuring it out, still building courses between client calls, and still learning what works. Her biggest surprise so far is that TikTok, not LinkedIn, has become her primary source of leads. One video filmed at her kitchen bench with no makeup and messy hair hit 125,000 appearances.

This conversation is an honest look at what the first year of running your own business actually feels like, the self-doubt, the wet cement, the Friday that was supposed to be marketing day but got swallowed by a client emergency, and the small wins that keep you going.

Check out Stephanie's company Epic People here: https://epicpeople.co.nz/

Watch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here: https://www.eccuity.com/podcasts

#waystowealth #epicpeople #hrconsultant #entrepreneurship #tiktokmarketing #leadership #nzbusiness #solofounder #startingabusiness #smallbusiness #womeninbusiness #selfemployed #wealthbuilding #yearone

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Andy Rolston, founder of Rolston Leadership Group and a leadership coach who learned more about leading people on a rugby sideline than he ever did in a corporate office.Andy left school and became a mechanic, moved into computing, spent time in corporate, then walked away to retrain as a rugby coach. He coached across New Zealand, Canada, and England before buying a carpet cleaning business, building it up, selling it to his partner, and eventually landing where he is now, helping managers become leaders.The conversation covers why most people get promoted for being good at their job and then get no preparation for the completely different skill set that leadership requires. Andy explains why he used to do his most technical coaching when players were exhausted rather than fresh, why he never told his team what to fix at halftime, and how giving one nervous young player a single thing to focus on unlocked her entire game.He also gets into why ego is the biggest barrier to good leadership, what the All Blacks got right after the 2007 World Cup, and why he thinks every business owner should be building for sale even if they never plan to sell.Listen to every episode of Ways to Wealth here: https://www.eccuity.com/podcastsLearn more about Andy at: https://andyrolston.com#waystowealth #leadership #rugbycoaching #entrepreneurship #nzbusiness #managertoleader #trust #teamculture #allblacks #coaching #businessexit #personalgrowth #wealthbuilding #smallbusiness

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Ray Nicholls, owner of Chi International and the brand behind Chi Herbal Drinks.Ray spent decades inside blue-chip New Zealand companies as the person they put on anything that needed to break the mould. He launched products in the Middle East during a civil war, helped grow a beverage business through a private equity cycle, and then bought a 28-year-old brand he had admired for years.What he found was not what he expected, and the biggest shift came from the last person on the team he would have predicted.This conversation covers what corporate life prepares you for and what it doesn't, why a business track record can be misleading, and why giving young people real trust might be the most underrated decision a business owner can make.#waystowealth #entrepreneurship #nzbusiness #beverages #chi #frucor #privateequity #leadership #youngtalent #acquisition #venturestudio #resilience #wealthbuilding #smebusiness

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Mindy Gibbins-Klein, founder of the first book coaching company in the UK and the person behind over 1,400 published thought leaders across 18 countries.Mindy moved from the US to the UK following a boyfriend, got left behind, and decided to stay. After three redundancies in five years, including being laid off while pregnant, she used her severance as a financial cushion to start her own business. That was 25 years ago.She has since built a career around helping experts, executives, and entrepreneurs get their thinking out of their heads and into books that serve their business. Her method, which earned her the name "The Book Midwife", starts before a single word is written, helping clients make the dozens of decisions around scope, structure, tone, length, and format that most people don't realise they need to make.In this conversation, Mindy explains why publishing is the easy part and why most books fail long before they reach a publisher. She talks about the client who handed her a self-published book and the 23 problems she found immediately, why she now works with only ten private clients per year, and what she learned from supporting 32 Tony Robbins events as a senior leader.Charlie and Mindy also get into why long-form content is becoming more important as AI floods the market with short-form noise, and why someone spending four hours reading your book creates a completely different relationship than someone seeing your ad.Check-out Mindy on Linked-in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mindygibbinsklein/Check-out Mindy’s company here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/giving-1-percent/ Watch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast: https://www.eccuity.com/podcasts #waystowealth #bookcoaching #thoughtleadership #entrepreneurship #publishing #writingabook #credibility #personalbranding #nzbusiness #wealthbuilding #contentcreation #selfpublishing #tonyrobbins #authors

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Julian Zhu, founder and managing director of MiDeer Limited and partner at Skychee Ventures.Julian has spent over 25 years leading cross-border business between New Zealand, China, and the US, managing a $500 million investment fund and advising organisations from Fortune Global 500 companies like Tencent and NTT through to New Zealand health brands entering the Chinese market for the first time.Julian graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Nanjing University, one of China's top ten, and later completed an EMBA there alongside a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration from Massey University. He was named Person of the Year by the Nanjing University Business School in 2016.Before building his own advisory practice, Julian worked at a company backed by Peking University and spent time at US Fortune 500 firm Shaw Group. After arriving in New Zealand 26 years ago, he started as a research assistant at the University of Auckland before falling into cross-border consulting through helping Good Health Products become one of the first NZ supplement brands to enter China.In this conversation, Julian explains why he calls himself a lighthouse rather than a bridge, because most Kiwi businesses looking at China can't see where to go, who to trust, or how to structure a deal that works across both cultures. He walks through how he structures partnerships that give NZ companies access to Chinese capital, agents, and distribution without requiring them to sell equity, and why co-branding agreements and agent-funded marketing models often close faster and protect both sides better than traditional raises.He also talks about why China should never be treated as a single market, the trust-building process that sits behind every deal, and the radio story about New Zealand birds that made him choose this country over anywhere else in the world.Learn more about JulianLearn about Julian’s companyWatch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast#waystowealth #crossborder #nzbusiness #chinamarket #export #tencent #entrepreneurship #investment #auckland #shanghai #capitalraising #jointventures #traderelations #wealthbuilding

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Joe Slater, co-founder of Six Barrel Soda and head of product at Consumer NZ. Joe built six businesses across hospitality, beverages, distribution, and e-commerce before stepping out of his own company and getting a job for the first time in years. The transition from founder to employee raised a question he hadn't expected: can I do this, and who am I without the business?Joe started with a caravan cafe on an old car yard in Wellington in 2008. He opened a bar and restaurant shortly after, then launched Six Barrel Soda in 2012 during the early days of the craft beverage movement. The brand grew to export to six countries, landed in Target stores in the US, and was eventually sold to St Andrews Limes in early 2025.But the exit wasn't a straight line. Joe talks about the burnout that led to him stepping out of operations, how he found and hired his replacement in six weeks over a single coffee, and the systems he put in place years earlier that made the handover possible.He also spent three years at Creative HQ running startup programs and coaching pre-launch founders. That experience gave him a different view of what makes businesses succeed and fail, and he is direct about the traps he sees founders walk into, from copying other companies instead of being themselves, to not understanding how long it takes to make money, to raising capital before knowing what they actually want.The conversation covers what it feels like to go from running your own thing to having a boss, why full-sugar Coke sales still go up every year despite the health movement, and what Joe and his wife are planning across the next 20 years.Watch all episodes of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here.

Check-out Joe’s Linked-in here.#waystowealth #sixbarrelsoda #consumernz #entrepreneurship #startup #nzbusiness #craftbeverages #founders #smallbusiness #burnout #exits #wealthbuilding #businesscoaching #wellington

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Peter McKay, former Wall Street Journal markets reporter and Web3 content creator.Peter covered oil and commodities for the Journal during the Iraq war, reported on the 2008 crash from the trading floor, and says what's unfolding right now with Iran, oil, and the global economy is giving him flashbacks. Except this time, he thinks the uncertainty might be worse.Peter spent over a decade at the Wall Street Journal, where he was part of the team that won a Gerald Loeb Award for coverage of the 2010 flash crash. He has since moved into Web3 marketing and content, co-authored white papers on blockchain supply chains for the World Economic Forum and writes the w3w newsletter on decentralisation.This conversation is a wide-ranging look at what's going on in the world right now. Peter and Charlie break down why 2008 started in finance and spilled into the real economy, but this time the reverse is happening, starting with supply chains, oil, and consumer spending before working its way into markets.They get into the concentration of both consumer spending and R&D in the US, where the top 20% of earners now drive an outsized share of the economy. They also discuss why AI might be following the classic hype cycle pattern, why most companies outside of tech still haven't found a real application for it, and the growing problem of bot-generated content on social media that could be undermining the entire digital advertising model.The conversation finishes on blockchain's quiet momentum in finance, including the fact that the clearinghouse behind the New York Stock Exchange is now experimenting with on-chain settlement.Watch all episodes of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here.

Check-out Peter McKay’s Linked-in here: Timestamps:00:00 intro00:59 The world right now06:54 The technology shift18:05 What you can actually do23:18 Outro#waystowealth #wallstreetjournal #oilprices #geopolitics #ai #web3 #blockchain #socialmedia #markets #inflation #supplychain #iran #fintech #economy

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Kerri McMaster, CEO of ‘Goodair Nosebuds’. One in four people worldwide deal with chronic nasal congestion, and fewer than 15% are happy with what's available to them. Kerri took a prototype sitting in a university lab, one she initially dismissed the first time she saw it and turned it into a drug-free consumer product that sold out within days of launch.Kerri is a two-time karate world champion who has spent most of her career doing one thing: taking ideas that are stuck and turning them into businesses. She ran 42 karate schools, built a consulting business in sports performance, co-founded Performance Lab Technologies, and spent over 20 years in sports tech before the company merged with a US partner in 2020.When a contact at AUT showed her a vibrating nasal device with a clunky prototype and a giant battery, she didn't see the opportunity at first. But the deeper she went into the research behind nasal breathing, nitric oxide production, and how the body's own systems can be activated without pharmaceuticals, the bigger the potential became.In this conversation, Kerri talks about what it took to move from 20 years of university research to a product on a pharmacy shelf, and why her decision to position it as a wellness device instead of going down the medical route changed everything.She also opens up about the quality control crisis that nearly ended the business before it launched, what happens when demand outpaces your ability to scale, and what she learned across multiple startups about finding the right people to build with.

Watch all episodes of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here.

Check-out Goodair Nosebuds here.

#waystowealth #goodairnosebuds #nasalcongestion #healthtech #breathing #drugfree #entrepreneurship #nzbusiness #wearabletech #hayfever #wellness #sportstech #wealthbuilding #startup

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Stephanie Pow, founder of Crayon and former equity derivatives trader at UBS.

She studied at Wharton and Harvard, spent years on one of the largest trading floors in the southern hemisphere, and then spotted a gap in financial support that almost nobody was solving. When her first child arrived, she saw firsthand how life transitions change the way people engage with money, and she set out to build something around it.Stephanie started her finance career at 18 through a co-op program that landed her internships at UBS, Goldman Sachs, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. She joined UBS full-time after graduating and spent four years on the equity derivatives desk, finishing up running the hybrids book as one of five women on a floor of over a hundred.Before Crayon, she founded Capital W, Australia's first organisation for women studying undergraduate business, won a General Sir John Monash Scholarship, and joined Kiwi SaaS startup Vend as Chief of Staff. Then she had her first child, and everything changed.Her first attempt at a startup was a robo-investing platform. She got an FMA license, built wireframes, and tested with users for two years before looking at the unit economics and realising the model wouldn't work in New Zealand. She binned it all and started over.What came next was Crayon, a bootstrapped and completely independent financial coaching company that works through employers to support people during the transitions that forces them to engage with money, whether that's having a baby, losing a job, or starting a new career.In this conversation, Stephanie explains why she chose not to raise VC, how she navigated the trade-offs with her partner, and what she learned from burning out while pushing a startup forward as a new mum. She also gets into why most financial education fails and what she is doing differently.Watch all episodes of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here: Check-out Stephanie’s Company, Crayon here: #waystowealth #crayon #financialwellbeing #parentalleave #fintech #entrepreneurship #womeninfinance #nzbusiness #startup #financialcoaching #bootstrapped #wealthbuilding #personalfinance #tradingfloor

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Bex and Kate, co-founders of The Better Packaging Co. They collect plastic pollution in Indonesia and turn it into commercial packaging. A world-first model that replaced the need for charitable funding with real market demand. But the road to get here took eight years, a complete product pivot, and a stock crisis that nearly ended everything.Bex came from tech startups and IBM. Kate left consulting to launch a magazine. Both stepped away to raise young families before channelling everything into Better Packaging in 2018.They started with compostable packaging, then went back to the drawing board when the science told them it wasn't enough. What they built next was something the industry said couldn't be done.In this conversation, they open-up about what it actually takes to solve a physical, global supply chain problem from New Zealand. The years of R&D with no guarantee of a result. The partner that failed after two years of due diligence. The crisis they call "Stocktober", and the call they had to make to every single customer when it happened.They also get into the co-founder dynamic that has held together across all of it. How their skills split naturally from day one. Why they were business partners before they were friends. And the one fear that Kate still carries about the relationship.Watch all episodes of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here: https://www.eccuity.com/ #WaysToWealth #BetterPackagingCo #OceanPlastic #CircularEconomy #Sustainability #Entrepreneurship #CoFounders #WomenInBusiness #NZBusiness #StartUp #PackagingInnovation #PlasticPollution #ImpactInvesting #WealthBuilding