The Better SMB Podcast

There’s no guest on this one. David and Rob step back from the usual format to look at where The Better SMB has got to, what they’ve learned, and what’s coming next.They’ve published 44 episodes and expect to reach 50 by the end of the year, and plays per episode are up 50% since January. They look back at some standout moments: Sean Doherty on innovation being a leadership choice rather than a funding issue, Ray Everest on building a business that runs without its founder, Patrick McKibbin on collaboration as a competitive advantage, and Peter Crow’s “cork in the washing machine.” Election interviews with the Labour Party and The Opportunity Party are also coming.Then come the new initiatives:

• Better Business Moments: a short-form video series from David, featuring founders who have built and sold their businesses. Every year around 50,000 NZ businesses simply shut their doors, and only about one in 20 is sold.
• The Better Business Brief: a new monthly blog that carries on from our NZ Manufacturer column. It’s built on the idea that a business’s performance is in the owner’s control.
• PerformIQ: the free Better SMB community. Members get performance data, leadership insights and partner offers, starting with Thryv’s “getting found online” check-up.

The idea behind all of it is a country of businesses that work without their owners, not because of them. These are businesses worth backing by customers, staff, banks, investors and, most of all, the owner.The government isn’t coming to save you. Grab a login at thebettersmb.com and take control.
The Better SMB
Everything for the NZ SME on a high-performance journey.
🔗 thebettersmb.comWhat’s New

• Better Business Moments: short-form video conversations with founders who’ve built and sold their businesses
• The Better Business Brief: our new monthly blog, with the first article out in October
• PerformIQ: performance intelligence for NZ SMBs. You get free tools, data and exclusive partner offers when you join the Better SMB community.

Partner Offer: Thryv
Small business marketing software, including a free “how well can you be found online” check-up for Better SMB community members. Sign up at thebettersmb.com to access it.
🔗 thryv.co.nzEpisode Sponsor: Setseed
The business diagnostic tool built for New Zealand SMEs. Benchmark your performance, find your gaps, and map out your growth.
🔗 setseed.co.nzKey Topics: Business Performance | Exit Readiness | Succession | Owner Dependency | Productivity | PerformIQ | Better Business Brief | Better Business MomentsFollow & Subscribe: Find The Better SMB on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. Got a guest or topic you’d like us to cover? Message us on LinkedIn or by email. And if you know an owner who’s working in the business instead of on it, share this episode with them.

Part of Better SMB's Election 2026 series — sitting down with each major party's small business spokesperson ahead of 7 November. Before two decades in the NZ Army and now Parliament, Dan Rosewarne struggled at school and found his path through vocational training. He walks David and Rob through Labour's Small Business Action Plan ("A Fair Go") and its follow-up, Small Business First — and what it would actually mean for a tradie, a café owner, or a sole trader.In this episode:

• The real story behind the 15-day payment rule: a $15k materials bill, a 90-day wait, and why "paid on time" isn't yet the law
• Scrapping Investment Boost for a $10,000 instant asset write-off — and Labour's answer to the "$5 billion tax grab" criticism
• Raising the GST threshold to $80,000, taking 35,000 of the smallest operators out of GST altogether
• The 15% target for government contracts going to small business — and who's accountable if it's missed
• Capability, AI support, and the case for "earning the right to automate" before pushing adoption
• What two decades in the military and a cancer diagnosis taught Dan about leading under pressure

Key quote: "Regardless of who you vote for this election, the future performance of your business won't be determined by policy alone. It will be determined by the decisions you make, the capability you build, and the actions you take every day." — David Altena
Book recommendation: Dan's pick for SME owners — That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph, co-founder and first CEO of Netflix
🔗 Dan Rosewarne MP — Labour Party: labour.org.nz/our-team/dan-rosewarne🔗 Labour's Small Business Action Plan: labour.org.nz/small-business-action-plan🔗 Small Business First: labour.org.nz/small-business-first📊 Benchmark your own business with PerformIQ: www.thebettersmb.com/nz-manufacturer-signup/🌐 The Better SMB: www.thebettersmb.com🎙️ The Better SMB Podcast: open.spotify.com/show/0VmzaRqeU5g94kzfPRKQlqProudly sponsored by Setseed — www.setseed.com#BetterSMB #Election2026 #NZPolitics #SmallBusiness #SMBPolicy

With hosts David Altena & Rob Bull | Guest: Qiulae Wong, Leader, The Opportunity PartyNew Zealand has been unable to meaningfully lift productivity for 40+ years, despite inquiries, restructures and reforms. Qiulae Wong — leader of The Opportunity Party, with a career in sustainable and ethical business including the B Corp movement — joins David and Rob to test her party's policies against one simple question: not whether they sound good, but whether they'd genuinely help SME owners build capability, capacity and confidence.
In this episode:

• What "radically centrist" actually means, and why Qiulae argues the left-right divide is holding New Zealand back
• The B Corp philosophy: putting social and environmental impact on equal footing with profit — and what that looks like inside a small business
• The tax reset policy explained in plain terms — and an honest admission that some SME owners could be worse off under it
• The Breakthrough Economy policy: widening access to R&D tax credits and smaller, faster grants so the innovation pipeline isn't just for big business
• Rob's pushback: R&D policy is only useful if SMEs have the time and capability to act on it in the first place
• Closing test for listeners: will this policy actually make it easier to build a capable, resilient small business — not just whether it polls well

Key quote: "We simply need to enact the playbook that [other OECD countries] have done over the last couple of decades." — Qiulae Wong
Book recommendation: Qiulae's pick for SME leaders — Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia
🔗 The Opportunity Party: www.opportunity.org.nz📊 Benchmark your own business with PerformIQ: www.thebettersmb.com/nz-manufacturer-signup/🌐 The Better SMB: www.thebettersmb.com🎙️ The Better SMB Podcast: open.spotify.com/show/0VmzaRqeU5g94kzfPRKQlqProudly sponsored by Setseed — www.setseed.com#BetterSMB #NZPolitics #SMBPolicy #Productivity #NZBusiness

With hosts David Altena & Rob Bull and special guest: Dr Paul Wood, author of Better Never Stops.
Growth and improvement aren't the same thing. Some businesses get bigger and more complicated. Some hit their targets while quietly drifting from what made them great. Dr Paul Wood — psychologist, former SAS and Hurricanes performance consultant, and author of Better Never Stops — joins David and Rob to unpack what continuous improvement actually looks like for the person running the business, not just the business itself.In this episode:

• The line between healthy continuous improvement and never feeling like anything is good enough
• "Personal prisons": the limiting mindsets that quietly hold capable owners back — including the assumption that everyone should care as much as you do
• What elite environments like the SAS and the Hurricanes do differently that an average NZ business could actually borrow
• Genuine self-accountability for a leader with no one above them to report to
• The smallest first move to reverse slipping standards — service, culture, or your own habits
• Why "can't" is the word to ban from your leadership team's vocabulary — and what to replace it with

Key quote: "Better isn't really about fixing a business. It's about continually refining the person leading it." — David AltenaBook recommendation: Paul's pick for business owners — Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
📖 Paul Wood — paulwood.com📚 Better Never Stops — HarperCollins NZ: www.harpercollins.co.nz/9781775542971/better-never-stops/📊 Benchmark your own business with PerformIQ: www.thebettersmb.com/nz-manufacturer-signup/🌐 The Better SMB: www.thebettersmb.com🎙️ The Better SMB Podcast: open.spotify.com/show/0VmzaRqeU5g94kzfPRKQlqProudly sponsored by Setseed — www.setseed.com#BetterSMB #Leadership #ContinuousImprovement #NZBusiness #BetterNeverStops

With hosts David Altena & Rob Bull | Guest: Elise Balsillie, Head of Thryv Australia & New ZealandThree-quarters of NZ business owners think their online presence is strong. Only about half their own customers agree. Elise Balsillie draws on Thryv's 2025 Business Index — 2,000+ SME decision-makers and customers across Australia and NZ — to unpack that gap, and what it now takes to get found when customers are asking AI, not just Google, who to trust.In this episode:

• The confidence gap: why owners rate their own online presence far higher than customers actually experience it
• GEO vs SEO in plain English — what changes now that AI tools do the "searching" on a customer's behalf
• What ChatGPT or Google's AI Overview actually looks at when it recommends a plumber, accountant, or bookkeeper
• Why reviews and response speed matter more than a flashy website redesign
• The one hour a week that moves the needle further than a full rebrand
• A simple starting point: 15 minutes a week Googling your own business and three competitors, from your phone

Key quote: "Being listed is not the same as being discoverable." — David Altena🔗 Thryv — Small Business Marketing Software: www.thryv.com📊 Benchmark your own business with PerformIQ: www.thebettersmb.com/nz-manufacturer-signup/🌐 The Better SMB: www.thebettersmb.com🎙️ The Better SMB Podcast: open.spotify.com/show/0VmzaRqeU5g94kzfPRKQlqProudly sponsored by Setseed — www.setseed.com#BetterSMB #Thryv #GEO #SEO #SMBMarketing #NZBusiness

Smart people, sensible ideas, real effort — and yet the business isn't moving as fast as it should. David and Rob unpack why: it's rarely a strategy problem, a people problem, or a technology problem on its own. It's a connection problem — and it's quietly cancelling out good work in businesses everywhere.In this episode:

• The All Blacks analogy for misalignment: brilliant forwards, brilliant backs, no shared game plan
• Why only half of NZ SMEs have a documented plan — and why the rest run on reactive management
• The "hamster wheel" trap: teams return from training or conferences inspired, then slide straight back to status quo
• How to actually get a team to own the plan — devolved, military-style leadership over top-down mandates
• Why throwing technology at a broken process just makes chaos happen faster
• A simple test for your own business: ask your three most senior people to write down their top three priorities, independently

Key quote: "The behaviours of your people are the result of the system that you built." — Rob Bull, quoting W. Edwards Deming📊 Find out where your dots aren't connecting — benchmark your business with PerformIQ: www.thebettersmb.com/nz-manufacturer-signup/📰 Read the article this episode is based on — Connecting the Dots, NZ Manufacturer, The Last Word, June 2026🌐 The Better SMB: www.thebettersmb.com🎙️ The Better SMB Podcast: open.spotify.com/show/0VmzaRqeU5g94kzfPRKQlqProudly sponsored by Setseed — www.setseed.com#BetterSMB #NZManufacturing #Leadership #BusinessAlignment #SMBNZ

Every three years, New Zealand business hits pause and waits for political clarity before it moves. David and Rob call time on that habit. In 2026, hesitation isn't caution — it's a competitive disadvantage, and the data on productivity, closures, and unemployment backs them up.In this episode:

• Why election years trigger a "wait and see" mindset — and why it's mostly noise, not strategy
• The uncomfortable truth about NZ's business closures, inflation, and where we actually stand against the OECD on unemployment
• The real problem isn't the election — it's that most SMBs don't plan, don't set 90-day sprints, and end up purely reactive
• Four practical moves to build momentum now: benchmark your reality, lock in capital plans early, double down on customers, and run 90-day sprints
• The Warren Buffett lesson: be greedy when others are fearful — why the quiet ones now are positioning to jump ahead

Key quote: "There's three types of people in this world — people who make things happen, people who watch things happen, and people who go, 'what just happened?'" — David Altena

📊 Know where you stand before you plan where you're going — benchmark your business with PerformIQ: www.thebettersmb.com/35-by-35/🌐 The Better SMB: www.thebettersmb.com🎙️ The Better SMB Podcast: open.spotify.com/show/0VmzaRqeU5g94kzfPRKQlqProudly sponsored by Setseed — www.setseed.com

Has a government regulation, policy shift, or piece of legislation ever directly affected your business? Chances are it has. And chances are your response was a BBQ rant, a frustrated call to your accountant, or a LinkedIn post — but not a conversation with the people who actually made the decision.David and Rob sit down with Holly Bennett — lawyer, former political staffer, and founder of Awhi Group, one of New Zealand's most transparent government relations firms. Holly also founded Engage, the country's only organisation dedicated to teaching everyday Kiwi business owners how to lobby effectively.What most SME owners get wrong: they think lobbying requires connections, cash, and a Wellington phone book. Holly dismantles that assumption completely. The biggest myth? That only the big end of town can do it. The most underused tool available to every business owner? Their local MP — and it costs nothing.The conversation covers how to actually engage government — who to talk to, what hat they're wearing, and why sending correspondence to the wrong office means it disappears into a void. Holly also opens up on building Awhi from scratch in a sector most New Zealanders couldn't define, launching Lobbyist.nz to bring ethical standards to a largely unregulated industry, and why now — with an election on the horizon — is the most important time for SMEs to demand their seat at the table.The room where decisions get made has empty chairs. This episode shows you how to pull one out.Show NotesGuest: Holly Bennett — Founder & MD, Awhi Group | Founder, Engage
🔗 awhigroup.nz
🔗 engage.org.nz
🔗 lobbyist.nzThe Better SMB
Everything for the NZ SME on a high-performance journey.
🔗 thebettersmb.comEpisode Sponsor: Setseed
The business diagnostic tool built for New Zealand SMEs — benchmark your performance, identify your gaps, and chart your roadmap for growth.
🔗 setseed.co.nzKey Topics: Lobbying | Government Relations | SME Advocacy | NZ Policy | Political Engagement | Business Growth | Awhi Group | EngageFollow & Subscribe: Find The Better SMB on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts. If this episode changed how you think about your relationship with government — share it with three business owners who need to hear it.

Episode OverviewNew Zealand has around 530,000 SMEs — they employ 29% of the workforce and contribute over a quarter of GDP. Yet small business owners have long carried a regulatory and employment-law burden built, as the episode puts it, by people who've never signed a payroll or lost sleep over an employment dispute. In this episode, David and Rob sit down with Laura McClure MP — a former small business owner herself, having helped grow her family's fire safety consultancy into a national operation — for a deep, practical conversation on cutting red tape, reforming employment law, and what will actually move the needle on New Zealand's productivity ahead of the 2026 election.

• From business owner to Parliament: Laura helped scale her family's fire safety consultancy from the South Island into Auckland, and later found herself ironically being paid to help other businesses navigate the very red tape ACT now wants to cut.
• "Orange fatigue": Laura's term for regulatory overload — when constant compliance signals (like endless high-vis and road cones) stop registering as real warnings, making everyone less safe, not more.
• All that glitters is not gold: The 2015 health and safety reforms are Laura's go-to example of good intent gone wrong — a regulator was created without clear rules on how to actually comply, spawning a costly compliance "cottage industry."
• The regulation tip-off line: Run by the Ministry of Regulation, it's already fixed absurd rules — like hairdressers unknowingly breaking the law by offering a client a glass of wine or even a cup of tea.
• The "Golden Handshake" Bill: Laura's member's bill would let employers and employees have honest, protected conversations about ending employment by mutual agreement — modelled on similar law in the UK, Canada, and Australia — without it automatically triggering a personal grievance.
• Personal grievance risk and hiring: Laura argues the cost and risk of getting a hire wrong is a major reason small business owners hesitate to take people on at all.
• Leadership over technology: Laura agrees the biggest productivity lever is leadership and culture inside the business — government's job is to get out of the way, not to be the driver of productivity itself.
• Access to capital: Banks remain risk-averse to lending against a business case versus property, and NZ continues to struggle attracting foreign direct investment — partly, Laura argues, due to Resource Management Act uncertainty.
• Procurement pain for SMEs: A vivid example — a small-town painter missed out on a swimming pool repaint tender because the process was too complex, and a big contractor won it at four times the price, then subcontracted the same painter to do the job.
• Quickfire round: book recommendation — Habits of High Performers by James Loughlin.

Key Quote"The best thing government can do for a small business owner is to get out of the way — and then actively remove the obstacles it has already placed in the path."
The Better SMB is on a mission to lift New Zealand's productivity by helping SMB leaders take practical steps to improve business performance — through the podcast, our column The Last Word, and our growing community.🌐 Website: The Better SMB — Turning High Performance Into a System

• Setseed — for your online platform requirements
• PerformIQ — for your in-depth business assessment and benchmarking

Enjoyed this episode? Like, share, and comment — it helps us bring more great guests and content to New Zealand's SMB community.

Episode OverviewIf you had to sell your business tomorrow, what would it actually be worth to a buyer — without you in it? Every year over 50,000 NZ businesses close and only ~2,000 actually sell. Businesses that sell are built to run without the owner as the glue. Rod Cook spent over a year pulling himself out of the critical path of Jackson's Flooring Design Commercial to make that possible.

• Origin story: Rod joined his wife Leanne's family flooring business, buying the commercial division in Hawke's Bay.
• Investing in advice early: A business coach from day one, plus a rule to always pay himself a salary — "the cost was irrelevant to the benefit I got from it."
• Weathering the cycles: The GFC and COVID — the pandemic pause pushed a systems overhaul that set up later growth.
• Delegate, don't abdicate: Early hiring mistakes taught Rod the difference, before building a nine-person team.
• "Milk the cow a little longer": An accepted sale offer was shelved on advice from friend John Hutch (Plan A Consulting) — unpopular with Leanne at the time, but the right call.
• The 2024 plan: Standalone premises, working Rod out of the day-to-day, and preparing for a future sale.
• On loneliness in business: Why an informal "board" of trusted advisors matters without formal governance.
• Sales as the engine: Ranked #1 in his franchise group for 19 of 20 years.
• Would it have run without him a decade ago? "Not a chance in hell."

"Delegate, but don't abdicate." — advice from John Hutchinson that reshaped how Rod built his team.
The Better SMB is on a mission to lift New Zealand's productivity by helping SMB leaders take practical steps to improve business performance — through the podcast, our column The Last Word, and our growing community.🌐 Website: The Better SMB — Turning High Performance Into a System

• Setseed — for your online platform requirements
• PerformIQ — for your in-depth business assessment and benchmarking (send me a URL and I'll link it)

Enjoyed this episode? Like, share, and comment — it helps us bring more great guests and content to New Zealand's SMB community.HighlightsKey QuoteAbout The Better SMBWith Thanks to Our Sponsors