Mover + shaker

You can take the boy out of the Bay of Plenty, but you can’t take the Bay out of the boy. Maria Hoyle talks to the local influencer about going back for his future.

WORDS Maria Hoyle / PHOTOS Garth Badger 

I’ll be honest – I was apprehensive about meeting Jay Reeve. I’d seen the pics, read the bio. Here’s a tall, handsome, motorbike-riding, surfing dude with multiple successful roles – among them DJ, wine brand co-owner and social media influencer. During his time at MTV (they approached him – he’s never had to apply for a job in his life), he jetted around the world meeting the likes of Kanye, Snoop Dogg and Dave Grohl. He has a beautiful wife, adorable twin boys, and a queue of fascinating personalities to interview as co-host of The Rock radio show Rock Drive with Jay & Dunc. His life is fast, busy, glam. And now he has to spend an hour with me. 

However, from the moment we sit down at a café near Jay’s new home in Auckland’s Herne Bay, he’s fully engaged, relaxed, self-deprecating, interesting and interested. Perhaps acting is another of his many skills. But it turns out the truth is far simpler – Jay Reeve is a people person.

Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t disappoint on the rock ’n’ roll quotient, turning up on his Harley, sauntering in and shaking hands with a friend (a fan?) at a nearby table. I’d anticipated the cool – what I hadn’t expected was the warm. He gives me a generous hug, meets my eyes with his velvety green ones (yep, something about Jay brings out the Mills & Boon in me), and for a full 50 minutes, I have his undivided attention. Oh, apart from when another cool-looking guy comes over, launches into some banter, and Jay responds with a jovial, “Mate, I’m in the middle of an interview – I’ll give you a bell”. When his buddy’s gone, Jay explains, “Super-clever guy, rides a Harley as well. He’s the lead singer of Blindspott.” Of course he is. Because that’s the world Jay inhabits.

But… and here’s the big but. It takes only a few minutes of chatting to understand something fundamental about this Bay of Plenty-born 36-year-old. A flash Harley might be what gets him around, but community, family and friendship are what drive him. They shape his past, his present, and will no doubt shape his future. As for people, well – Bay locals, band frontmen, baristas, red-carpet stars, middle-aged journalists… they’re all one and the same to Jay. Apart from Delta Goodrem. We’ll get to her in a minute. 

First things first. Jay has a window of time before heading off to a school visit with his five-year-old sons Oscar and Hunter (who are soon to start at the local primary) to talk me through what exactly he, his wife Anna and their boys are doing back in Auckland. In case you’re not familiar with it, the story goes like this.

Jay grew up on a dairy farm in Te Puna, moved to Mount Maunganui at 15, disliked school but nonetheless ended up, at 21, teaching home economics at Tauranga Boys’ College. (Although he appreciated his parents’ hard work, he had no desire to take over the farm.) It was while commentating and competing in the Hyundai Pro Longboard Tour that he was snapped up by MTV. He stayed there for five years as a VJ, doing the aforementioned A-list interviews, then started to ponder a career in radio.

As luck would have it (to be fair, most turning points in Jay’s life might well start with that phrase), MTV made him redundant, so he walked away with a nice juicy payout and able to pursue the radio career he wanted. There followed six years on ZM’s drive show with Paul ‘Flynny’ Flynn, before the popular duo ‘consciously uncoupled’ and Jay snagged a two-year gig at Radio Hauraki.

At that point, in late 2017, the family packed everything up and headed back to the Mount. For good. “The plan was to stay there indefinitely,” says Jay. “I was done with radio. TV not so much; I’ve still got a couple of show concepts bubbling away in my head.”

The lure of the Bay was the slower pace that would enable them to focus on what matters. “We were well set up financially, and I wanted to spend as much time with my boys as I could before they went to school,” says Jay. He also wanted them to experience a taste of the childhood he’d had. On the farm, Jay grew up milking cows, hosing down the yard and doing other chores he “loved”.

“It was the best upbringing,” he says. “We’d put sandwiches in a backpack and walk to the back of our farm about 5km away, and spend the whole day adventuring. Our farm backed onto Whakamarama, and we had friends who lived on the other side of the river, so we’d meet them and jump off the waterfall. We’d go to Maramatanga Park with my dad and play twilight cricket. We’d hang out in the Te Puna clubrooms drinking lemonade and raspberry with a punnet of chips, while the adults told dirty jokes. I loved growing up in Te Puna.”

Jay reckons that even today, life in the Bay is simpler – that people are just that bit more content than their big-city counterparts. So the question remains: what’s he doing back in Auckland?

It came down to “the guarantee of a salary for a set number of years while we’re at the age we’re at. I’ve always looked at it that between 30 and 40 you make the majority of your funds, and then from that point, you can still be at an age to decide what you want to do. You can pivot, start again at 40.”

Jay wanted to maximise that peak earning potential, but if he was going to slam the thing into reverse and head back up to the big smoke, it was going to be on his own terms. He says any Auckland job “needed to tick every single box. I needed the person I worked with
to be someone I got on with, it needed to be the time slot I wanted, it needed to be on a station I liked, and it needed to be on a network I had respect for.”

He found all that at The Rock. Jay says that, ironically, the move ended up being hardest on Auckland-bred Anna. “She really did love the Mount – the pace of life and what it was like to bring up a family there.”

But it’s working out. So far. Anna’s already in her own groove. “She looks after all the social accounts for the businesses, takes care of all my social-influence stuff as I don’t have time, and looks after the boys. She’s ‘life admin’ for the Reeve family. It’s an unrelenting and perhaps under-appreciated job.”

As for Jay, he’s loving The Rock. It’s not just a gig to earn some decent dough – he and Dunc have worked out a format they’re both super excited about. Jay hadn’t worked with him before, so they had a “feeling-out process” – time spent getting to know one another. A bit like Married at First Sight? Jay laughs. “Ha – that’s a good way of putting it, yes.” 

As well as music and cheeky banter, the pair wanted to give people something that would challenge their existing views, and to bring on guests – like a controversial recent interviewee who talked about trying the mind-bending drug ayahuasca – who would provide a fresh perspective. Jay, an avid podcast listener, admits he can be close-minded at times, but tries to overcome it. “I’ve started listening to a podcast and I’ve gone, ‘F**k this guy, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about’, then by the end of it I’m, ‘Oh my god, I’ve come right around’. I like that education; we’re trying to do a bit of it. Nowadays we’re so quick to go, ‘I’m team this or team that’. But you can sit in the middle and go, ‘Well, tell me more’.

“I’ve always said I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” says Jay. With his four career boxes ticked off, everything else about their new Auckland life has magically fallen into place too. “We needed to quickly find somewhere to live and we’ve just, through a friend of a friend, signed a year-long lease on a house, so we’ve been able to get the boys into the school we wanted,” says Jay. “My work is very close. I’m surrounded by great friends, including close friends of ours from the Bay just around the corner.”

Although he’s grateful, it’s not the same as life at the Mount. “Where we lived, Gordon Road, we knew everyone, we knew each other’s kids, there was a real sense of community,” he says. I suggest he can recreate that in Auckland, but he laughs ruefully. “It’s too far gone! Everyone’s just busy. That’s the vibe of Auckland.” So the Bay is never far from his thoughts. But he knows that “to do our show and our talent and the investment from the radio station justice, the minimum term [for him in Auckland] would be five years”. It’s not that he’s complaining; Jay isn’t a whinger. It’s just the way it is right now.

One of Jay’s multiple roles is “silent but loud” partner in wine brand Master of Ceremonies, launched in 2016, which he co-owns with Anna and friends Mat Croad and Nick Marshall. (They’ve also teamed up with Hawke’s Bay winemaking supremo Rod McDonald – read more about it in Jay’s column in UNO Issue 43.) Did he know anything about wine before embarking on this venture?

“I was a big drinker!” he laughs. Plus, “I like to keep an eye out for things that are just around the curve. Rosé was a thing that popped up on my radar. My wife has always drunk rosé. I have bikie friends who drink rosé, not beer. Mat’s a wine importer and could see rosé was going up at a rapid rate. We’ve seen that in the past four years; there used to be three or four bottles in the supermarket aisle, now there are about 100. Nick came on as the majority shareholder, CEO and CFO. He pays himself a peppercorn wage to keep the business going; he’s such an asset to the business. It’s the people who make the business what it is. It’s cool to do business with your buddies.”

As well as a rosé, there’s now a Master of Ceremonies Central Otago pinot noir and a pinot gris 2018, plus a limited-edition sparkling rosé that’s a collaboration with fashion label Stolen Girlfriends Club. They have plans to export the coming vintage, “a push into Australia, Singapore, Asia”, and exciting plans for expansion. “Nick’s a very forward thinker,” says Jay. “ We’ve been working on something for the past two or three years; it’s very close to being released. It will be well ahead of the curve.”

Are we talking wine here? “Aah… yes and no.” He grins. “I’d love to tell you more, but…” 

Jay has a lot of things on the go, and living life as he does, at full throttle, requires mastering the art of maintenance. How does he keep himself in such good shape? “I fast – it’s a new thing for me,” he says. “I eat between 1pm and 7pm. I also try not to have any sugars or
carbs; it’s predominantly a meat-and-vegetable diet. 

“I met a guy called Nigel Beach, who’s an offsider for Wim Hof [the Dutch extreme athlete known as the Iceman, who pioneered the Wim Hof Method] and does this thing called ‘controlled discomfort’, where you have an ice bath. I get up and hop into a cold shower, or into a cold river, or into the sea. It’s amazing. It’s like going ‘control, alt, delete’. Apart from that, I drink far too much, sleep minimal hours and
really burn the candle at both ends and the middle.”

What about his mental health? Jay has talked in the past about how his relentless positivity has seen him accused of being arrogant. How does he cope when people take a shot at him or when he gets flak for something he’s said or written? Does it bother him?

He strains a little, like he really wants it to bother him. “Hmm… ah…” He laughs. “I don’t put that much thought into it!” What no doubt helps is that he’s always willing to listen. “I can say something, but then if someone more informed comes along and says, ‘You’re wrong and these are the reasons why I think you’re wrong’, then I’m 100 percent open to shifting my position – and I do so frequently. If you’re not learning, you’re just not moving.”

I try him on adversity. Any adversity, Jay, even a smidgen? Er, no. “I choose to be positive,” he says. And he’s aware how lucky he is. “There’s no problem I could ever have, ever, that could compare on a global scale with what happens every day to other people all over the world,” he says.

Okay, let’s try this, then. What about being a parent? Now that definitely comes with its curveballs, especially raising boys in this era of #MeToo. How do you teach them to speak their truth and be respectful of women?

“My wife and I talk about this a lot,” says Jay. “People just want to be treated with respect.” He believes we’ve become so fearful of offending people, that we’ve simply ceased to communicate. “Then there’s a systemic breakdown, then there’s alienation, misinformation. People put it in the too-hard basket. Now more than ever, we need to be talking.”

As for respecting women, or indeed any individual, the key is talk. “Don’t assume,” says Jay. “To be in an intimate situation with a person of the other sex or same sex and assuming they want to take it to the same place as you will get you into trouble. So communicate. But for kids to learn things, they have to see it.”

And then we’re back to the Bay. “I don’t want to say Auckland does a bad job of raising kids, but [provincial New Zealand]does it better,” says Jay. “We just got back from Gore and I didn’t see one kid on a phone while I was there. We did a show out of a bar/restaurant and kids were there with two or three generations of their family, talking across the table with everyone, sitting between adults, being part of the situation.”

For someone who’s met his fair share of celebs, Jay’s touchingly appreciative of these ordinary scenarios and of people showing each other good old-fashioned courtesies. So how does that pan out when he’s meeting the big stars – is he able to apply his philosophy of treating everyone decently, or does he get so starstruck that he acts differently?

Jay shakes his head. There was one person who made him a little gaga. “Strangely enough, Delta Goodrem. She was coming down the red carpet and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s Delta – whatever’.” But as she got closer, the ‘Delta effect’ rendered him speechless. “She was ethereal, like she had a halo of light around her. I was just holding out the mic in front of me. I was with my producer at the time, Bronwynn Wilson, who was going, ‘What are you f**king doing? Just talk!’ It was getting awkward, so Delta looked at Bronwynn and said, ‘So are you guys having a good time?’ and Bronwynn went from being like ‘Grrrr’ to ‘Uh… ah…’ – the same thing. After Delta had walked past I said, ‘Oh my god, I don’t know what happened!’ and Bronwynn said, ‘I don’t know what happened either!’”

It’s hard to imagine Jay being lost for words; for him, striking up conversation is the easiest thing in the world. Be it with A-listers or mere mortals, his favourite opener is, “‘So when you’re not doing this, what are you doing?’ And then they can say, ‘I run I with my dog, I like hanging out with my kids’ or whatever.”

What does that look like for Jay – what’s he doing when he’s at his happiest? “Happiness for me…” he pauses. “It almost makes me emotional thinking about it. This summer, we had this big group of us – all my family, my kids, my wife, one of my sisters, my parents, a big bunch of my friends – and we all rarked it up on the beach. The kids were running around, the surf was pumping, it was a beautiful still day. We were watching over each other’s kids, hanging out, having beers. That for me is heaven. Just heaven. I desperately miss it.”

In the background, Auckland attempts to plead its case: the thrum of traffic, a passing truck, coffee machines going full pelt to fuel the got-to-be-somewhere set. Jay is oblivious.

“You know, sometimes it’s nice to know what you want, so you can miss it and try to get back there,” he says. “It’s solidified for us what we want to do, where we want to be, how we want to raise our family, and what we want to be like as people. For the first time in 36 years, I know what I want.”

And, quite honestly, who wouldn’t raise a glass of rosé to that?  

@THEJAYREEVE

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.

A methodical mind

WORDS JENNY RUDD PHOTOS LOGAN DAVEY

Stuart Crosby assumed office as mayor on October 9th 2004 after spending 18 years as an elected council member, becoming the twenty eighth mayor of Tauranga. After serving four terms, he decided not to enter the fray for the fifth. Following 12 years as mayor, and 18 as a Tauranga councillor, Stuart is now a Bay of Plenty Regional Councillor.

After chatting to Stuart for an hour or so, drinking tea in Elizabeth Café, I walked away thinking ‘I really like you.’ He was pretty specific and descriptive and gave some padding to the ‘Go back to the beach’ story, but he wasn’t rude or critical. He had a youthful and optimistic view, and a methodical mind. He definitely isn’t the ‘party line’ boy I thought he’d be. More than that, he was a proper human in a role which is largely thankless, doesn’t do much to bond you to your spouse, and occupies your every waking second.

If there’s anyone who needs a finger pointing at them and being given some credit for how bloody brilliant our region is today, it’s Stuart.

What does a mayor do?

First and foremost you are the elected member of the council. Last time we had a new council, I said ‘I am not your boss. You have been independently elected and are accountable and responsible for whatever you say and do.’ I believe we have a responsibility to create an environment where everyone can succeed, by removing barriers to their success.

The mayor’s role is set out in regulations, but it only scratches the surface. There’s another side, which only current or previous mayors would understand. It’s the responsibility of the city or area you represent. And that doesn’t stop, day or night. It’s something you can’t put on a spreadsheet or explain to someone else, because it’s a personal thing. As mayor, you are accountable and responsible for things you actually have nothing to do with. For instance, If someone has a car accident, people will often blame the road, and therefore the council and mayor. The fact they were drunk or stoned or going too fast or had bald tyres doesn’t come into it. You have to understand the situation, and think how best to represent the city, not yourself, in the best light.

The role is as much as you want to make it. I’ve seen mayors in some cities sleepwalk through the job, but the vast majority work their arses off with very little thanks or reward, but they don’t do it for that.

What do you think you brought to the role of mayor?

I have the ability stay calm under pressure, and rely on my knowledge and experience to do and say the right thing. I learned that a key attribute is to listen to people, try to stand in their shoes to really understand their point of view and then relate that view to the issue in question.

I’ve always had the view that you provide for today and plan for tomorrow. I put much time and effort with others in the planning ahead. Lots of politicians I have worked with didn’t have much interest in long term planning, just how daily issues affected their chances of being re-elected. Tauranga’s success is no accident, it is the result of a comprehensive plan which I had a role in developing and executing along with others using the resources we had at the time. 

While as a mayor you must lead, you don’t achieve much on your own. You can achieve huge things as a team.

What makes a good councillor?

I’ve always said ‘If you want something said, ask a male, if you want something done, ask a female’. Pretty much to a person, the women on the council are harder working and more focused than men. I think it’s because they communicate better, and are more passionate about the job. Generally speaking, women tend to do things which benefit others, as they are less ego driven.

And they network better too. Because New Zealand is still so small, those connections are really valuable. There are so few gatekeepers; you could have a chat with the prime minister if you really wanted to.

What aspect of the job was most challenging, did you work out how to overcome it?

When people connected to the council were affected by big losses like death, homes and businesses. I didn’t ever overcome getting emotionally involved. But I learned to front the challenge head on, and share the emotional side with those involved.

How did being mayor affect your family?

In hindsight, I too often prioritised my mayoral role above my family, and in particular in how I allocated my time. I believe this is a common issue with politicians, and especially those in roles of leadership. On the positive side there were occasions where my family met extraordinary people, because of my job.

Where are the gaps in Tauranga?

We are still struggling to find work for a professional couple in Tauranga. A recently arrived couple I know are a civil engineer and an accountant. They are finding it hard to get two jobs at the moment. The city will grow into it, though.

This building we are in, on the corner of Elizabeth Street, was a game changer. The next big one will be the new university campus. That will transform the city. The redevelopment is happening. In five to seven years, the CBD will be humming.

It will bring not only the energy and verve of students, but also the academic staff. And they will need different stimuli like museums, art galleries.

And there still isn’t enough to do for those in their twenties. We have to admit that. It will change, though. Where there is a demand, the supply will follow suit. We just need to keep them here in the meantime.

What do you think Tauranga City Council’s greatest achievement has been, over the years?

Our Growth Management Strategy called SmartGrowth. A number of key entities are working together with communities to plan ahead for the whole sub-region, which is a key element to our success. I’m proud to say I’ve been involved since its inception, and remain involved.

And finally, what advice would you give to someone who thinks they’d make a good mayor?

I will always support someone’s desire to stand as a councillor or for the mayoralty; it is a critical part of our democratic process. The problem is that many candidates have no idea about the role and the demands. Fortunately the voting public do have an understanding, and generally get it right at the election as far as the mayoralty is concerned. My advice for any candidate would be to spend time understanding the community you hope to represent, and the mechanics of that local government.

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“When I was elected as mayor, the town was being run by a small group of grey-haired businessmen. They pretty much decided on who would, and who wouldn’t be the mayor, and who would be ‘elected’ as councillors. Someone in the group came to me and said ‘Go back to the beach where you belong.’ My first mayoral function was at Tauranga Race Course at a presentation of the Japan New Zealand Cup, where I politely recounted the story to a group which included that gentleman.”

“Luckily the power of those people has diminished, in fact it’s almost non-existant now. The city has outgrown them. There’s a different generation coming through with a different agenda. In their thirties, they have a generosity of spirit. They aren’t motivated to make cash for themselves, but to create things for their generation and those after. And they take ownership. They don’t sit back and say ‘we want this’ to the government and council, they just think about what they can do to make where we live a better place. And they stick their necks out. Most of the time they succeed. To me, that’s very exciting. ”

Throwback: Liam Messam looks back at his 2006 UNO cover

THEN

Liam Messam went straight from Rotorua Boys' High School into the New Zealand Sevens Squad and began his full time rugby professional career. He was just 21 years old when he starred on the cover.

NOW

I must have had a full tub of Dax Wax in my hair. I laugh now when I see the cover, all styled up with the clothes and 'do.

Back then I was totally immersed, committed and focused. It was almost an obsession to be the best player I could be.

The highlight of my career? The friends I've made. Although, winning the Rugby World Cup in 2015 was up there, too! We had such an awesome culture within the team.

In August, I'm off to Toulon in France. The rugby will be fantastic. I've been to Paris and Marseille a couple of times, but this will be a completely different experience.

My two boys, Jai and Bodie, they are learning a few words in French to set them up for a new life in France.

I have such passion and love for the game, I'll keep playing until my body can't take it anymore. As for a career afterwards, I'd like to work in youth leadership, and of course, health and fitness.

Top of her game

WORDS JENNY RUDD PHOTOS TRACIE HEASMAN

A PLAN TO START A FAMILY AND GET TO THE TOP OF HER GAME PROFESSIONALLY SEES MARY HILL BECOME THE NEWEST PARTNER AT TAURANGA LAW FIRM, COONEY LEES MORGAN, SUPPORTED BY HUSBAND MATT AND SONS LUCA AND MITCH.

It’s not the first time Mary has been offered the position. Eight years ago, she was taken out for a coffee with then partner, Paul Cooney. “Paul knew that Matt and I had been going through IVF to try and start a family. He was very supportive. That morning, Paul asked me if I’d like to become partner, and I said, ‘I have some news to share with you too!’

“Although I knew Cooney Lees Morgan would have been happy for me to be a partner while I had babies, I felt that it was a special family time. I also knew that if I wanted to make partner in the future, then I would. There were people who told me I was crazy to let the opportunity go, and that it wouldn’t come round again. But my feeling was, if I wanted to make it happen then it would. I felt relaxed about waiting, and had faith in Cooney’s. I had seen that they treat people really well. When it comes to looking after their staff, and in particular mums, they always think long-term. I’m in a good place right now – the kids are happy, the youngest has been at school for a year, we have built a new home. Now feels like the right time to become a partner.”

MAKING THE MOVE

It was that desire to have a family, and to work in an environment where Mary could succeed whilst raising children, which drew the couple to Cooney Lees Morgan. “I had been working in competition law, doing high court negotiations in Auckland. Matt was working for Mercury Energy in a corporate role. Matt and I are both from Auckland, and it never occurred to me that we’d live anywhere else. But even then, 13 years ago, it felt busy and big. We started to look at places like Nelson, Hawke’s Bay and Tauranga.”

A connection to Sally Powdrell, chairperson of partners at the firm, convinced Mary to make the move. “I was offered a role in resource management – quite different from the competition law I’d been practising. But there were three big clinchers for me. One was Sally; she’s just amazing. She’d been made partner in her twenties, and although her children are now young adults, she was able to work part-time while they were teenagers, when she felt they needed her most. The second was that I could see the firm were driven to support community initiatives and play a role in building the community. The third was that they seemed to be a very happy group of lawyers. That’s a good sign when you are looking at committing to a firm! So, Matt and I made the move.”

“We had been living on Franklin Road in Ponsonby. We loved it, apart from at Christmas when we had to buy a load of cheap lights to stop our neighbours being angry with us. Every day another bulb went. By the end of the holiday, we were a pretty sorry sight. We could see people pointing and laughing at our efforts as they walked past!”

NEW GIRL

Mary is a ‘take-the-bull-by-the-horns’ kind of girl, which is lucky. She needed to learn, not only the different ways of doing things at her new firm, but also another area of law. “Paul Cooney had never had a junior before, but he turned out to be a brilliant mentor. He took me to every single meeting and upskilled me. There was all this new information to absorb. About a month into it, there was a hearing, and he chucked me straight into it! But I felt really supported, and so just got stuck in and had a go. It’s the way I approach most things.

“I was getting practical experience too: more so than with a big firm. I enjoyed being a junior to two QCs because I was able to go to the Court of Appeal and watch and learn about that side of things. In Auckland, I hadn’t run my own trials, but now I have four to six hearings a year. There have been two already this year. I had a three-week hearing when Luca, my eldest, was six weeks old. I presented my client’s case for four days, then a member from my team sat through the rest of the hearing. Good communication amongst my team meant we gave our client the best possible service.”

Most of the partners are from Auckland or Wellington. I ask Mary if she misses the big smoke, but she shakes her head. “We love it here, and the kids are thriving. In every way, it’s exceeded our expectations. I wanted to be able to make a life here and still be in litigation. Hearings are ‘full on’, and you need to be on your game to respond to everything that is thrown at you. Otherwise you end up looking like an idiot. In Auckland, there’s no way I could have had a family life with Matt and the children, and prepared properly for hearings. It would have been logistically impossible. Here in the Bay, our hearings are at the Twin Towers in The Mount: really close to my house! I can have a coffee at Slowfish, spend the morning at the hearing, take my client out for lunch, head back in, then go for a run around the Mount afterwards. It is infinitely better than battling through a sticky and swelling city to do the same job.”

PRESENTEEISM

It’s hard to believe the extent to which Mary’s firm make it possible for the parents to work around raising children. Old, established law firms aren’t renowned for making concessions like that, but it’s deep in Cooney’s culture to be supportive of their staff. “When my children were tiny, I was able to work two days a week for a couple of years. That’s virtually unheard of in our industry. I was still running hearings, my RMA practice and negotiating, and Cooney’s were happy to make it work. I shared a nanny with a colleague. If we had to go to a meeting together, which was not unusual, the nanny would look after all the children.”

“Recently I was up in Auckland at a conference with a group of young lawyers. They talked about the prevalence of ‘presenteeism’ at work. It’s the show of being constantly present and available at work, even if there isn’t anything to do. We discussed how damaging that culture is. It doesn’t get the best out of lawyers, so ultimately doesn’t do the best for the clients. It’s such an antiquated way of working, and one that we really don’t support.”

EXPECTATIONS

This culture of open-minded trust has a real effect on the work produced. “We are a pragmatic bunch. We’d much rather pick up the phone and have a quick chat than send out a waffly five-page letter. Because of that, we have built a good reputation both as a legal practice and employer. We have some big clients, like Zespri, Milford Asset Management, and Norske Skog Tasman, who like the way we work and choose us over the big city legal firms from Auckland or Wellington.”

THE JUGGLE

Mary is a bit of a superwoman. I asked her how a normal day looks: it can’t be easy having two small children and being at the top of your game professionally. She is incredibly fit and likes to do sunrise yoga then go for a run. If she has extra work on because of a hearing, it’s all done early in the morning. “Then it means I can do the school run. That’s my time to see how my boys are doing, and chat to the teachers. I usually get to work around 9.30 am, which is also good as I miss the traffic over the bridge. By the time I get home in the early evening to relieve the nanny, I’m done. Evenings are for Netflix!”

Mary’s favourite spots

Dinner: Burger Fuel, then Pilot Bay with Matt and the children

Glass of wine: On my new deck!

Clothes: I always shop at The Mount – Sisters & Co, Wallis, and North Beach

Run: The Rotorua lakes

Downtime: I belong to a cool book club, where we do anything apart from read books. We go for walks, have cooking lessons, and do anything else we can think of!

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:

Drifting through life

“There’s a lot to think about at such high speed. It’s a guessing game as to where the other car is because you often can’t see anything through plumes of smoke.”

WORDS TALIA WALDEGRAVE / PHOTOS JAHL MARSHALL

Jodie Verhulst is the number one female drift car driver in the country and watching her drive is phenomenal. Her arms and legs move at rapid speed, as if she is performing a type of dance, but her demeanor is cool, calm and collected. 

“It’s really just muscle memory and I don’t even know what I’m doing half the time.”

Jodie is one of the nicest people I think I’ve ever met. My editor, introduced us with the words, “Goodness, don’t you two look alike?” Jodie nods, smiling politely, but all I can do is blush. I certainly don’t see a similarity but am humbled in any way to be likened to this beauty. 

It is the hottest day of summer and we are at the D1NZ Drifting Championship, at ASB Baypark Arena. It is an assault on the senses. Stifling heat is intensified by the compulsory wearing of closed-toed shoes and the noise is like nothing I’ve ever heard; piercing and shocking, it sends vibrations rattling through my entire body. The smell is an overwhelming combination of petrol, dust and burning rubber. Cars come at me from every direction and it pays to be on high alert. It’s ridiculously exciting. 

You'd be forgiven if like me, you were not entirely sure what drifting is. Don't tell any of the lads in my life because along with the photographer from this shoot, they'll either scoff at, or disown me for admitting my ignorance. I had to google drifting and back it up with YouTube to work it out. Drifting is a technique in which a driver deliberately over-steers, losing traction while maintaining control. It’s all about showmanship, angle, speed and line.

I meet with Jodie a few days later and her explanation is far more relatable. 

“Drifting is like ballet but with two cars. You mimic the car in front and getting as close as you can without touching. There are two laps, one when you’re the leader, one when you’re the chaser. It’s a different sport to get your ahead around in the beginning, because instead of breaking into the corner, you actually accelerate.”

I’m in awe of this impressive woman who is killing it, in what is seemingly a man’s world. 

“Although we live in a time where there’s a balance between the sexes, you definitely feel a bit of pressure being one of the only females.” 

“My brother introduced me to cars and my partner Drew introduced me to drifting, and it was all downhill from there.”

“The response this weekend at the Championships has blown me away. I’ve had women coming up to me saying how much they love my driving, even the older ones. I’ll often catch some of the shyer, young girls out of the corner of my eye and I love to be able to give them something real to look up to other than pop stars or film stars. That especially, is a highlight with what I do. Although it’s just a bi-product of my driving, it makes me really happy, it’s really cool.”

Jodie’s partner Drew is the other half of her team and together they live and breathe all things drifting. I comment that she is very brave working so closely with her partner in such an intense environment, many relationships wouldn’t be able to weather it. 

“Drew has been an incredible mentor. He’s been one step ahead of me the whole time. I’m very lucky because it doesn’t matter to him that his partner is out there battling and might do better than him. I’d love to go head-to-head with him in a battle, there’d be no holds barred and I think there’d be a lot of damage to the cars!” 

This leads me to question the safety in drifting. I found myself on edge of my seat for the duration of each race - it’s hair-raisingly scary. 

“We’re increasing speeds and making the cars lighter, so it’s risky, but safety always comes first. We have a cage, harnesses and helmets, so compared to other sports, it’s quite safe.”

“If you’re not getting that feeling of nerves and adrenaline, and if you’re not scaring yourself, then you’re not pushing hard enough. It’s very powerful and you definitely work up a good sweat. I’ll be drenched by the end of today. Getting into the car is like stepping into a sauna.”

Jodie’s sweet nature seems contradictory to someone who would head into battle, deliberately aiming to knock out her opponent. It’s clear that drifting, like all sport, is incredibly competitive. 

“It’s a tough sport, and in the last two years, the gap has closed so much between competitive drivers. You have to do something special and really push the boundaries to stand out. I’m competing against people who have been in the sport five or six years longer than me, so I really have to go as hard as I can. It’s about more speed, sharper angles.”

Heightening this adrenalin-fuelled atmosphere are the fans. “The atmosphere at Baypark is insane, particularly as this is our home track. We’ve had people yelling in our ears and getting right in our faces, but that’s all part of the build up and adds to the excitement. When the drivers were introduced last night in the preliminary round and my name was called, I couldn’t believe it. The audience just went nuts. There’s just nothing like that and I’ll never forget it, not for my entire life.  I was actually choking up a little bit.”

I mention that a lot of my friends have been talking about her, without knowing about our interview. “There are a lot of closet drifters out there I think!”

Jodie tries to get me into the car so she can give me a ‘hot lap.’ I have absolutely no qualms in telling you all, I firmly declined. Save your tyres, save your petrol and use it far more wisely on someone else. I’ll be sitting firmly on the edge of my seat.

Something in the water

His face is already pretty much etched into the national psyche, and that easy smile and cool, calm demeanor have become known around the world, but in person, Peter Burling could not be more humble, more unassuming, or any more relaxed.

He may be an Olympic gold medal winner with a string of international titles to boot, and of course there is that not insignificant matter of bringing the America’s Cup back to its rightful home here in New Zealand, but in the flesh the man responsible for whipping a multi-million dollar boat through water at speeds approaching 100 km per hour is just a sweet-natured, very casual, amiable twenty-something. He’s arguably the world’s best sailor, but at heart he is still just a boy from the Bay, unfazed and unchanged by fame and more than willing to spend some time in front of the camera and talk to UNO about the journey so far.

It is a journey that began around 20 years ago in the Welcome Bay estuary, where an eight-year-old Burling and his brother first set sail in Jelly Tip, a wooden Optimist-class yacht that had definitely seen better days. “My brother got into it first and I just kinda got dragged along,” Burling says of his earliest foray into sailing, with that trademark understatement. “My Dad had been into sailing and thought it was a good skill to have. And it kind of spiralled from there.”

And when he says spiralled, he means it whirled wildly and unstoppably onto national then international stages: he won his first Optimist nationals at nine years of age, competed in the World Champs in Texas aged 12, and scooped the 2006 420 Class Worlds title in the Canary Islands at the tender age of just 15; a year later he won the Under-18 World Championship, took the 49er World Champs with Blair Tuke in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, and – again with Tuke – took home silver in the 2012 Olympics and gold in the 2016 event. Then came the America’s Cup and the New Zealand Order of Merit for Services to Sailing, but before we go there, lets just back up the bus and get back to Welcome Bay in the early noughties. 

“I have a lot of fond memories of that time,” Burling says. “Around here can be a pretty tricky place to sail, but one of the cool things about it is that you can sail in any conditions. In a lot of places you end up sailing in only one type of weather, but here, because you can get out in all kinds, it means you are quite well- rounded as you’ve had to deal with a lot of different things and looked at different ways of wining races - if you want to, you can sail in some pretty big swells at times here! The other cool thing about Tauranga is you have the keel boat club and the dinghies kind of just in one group, with adults and younger ones competing. It’s unique in that there is everything from the Learn to Sail level right on up to the keel boat club, and there’s not many around the country that have that.”

The sailing environment he encountered in Bermuda with the America’s Cup Challenge also had similarities to his early escapades on the sea around Tauranga, with a relatively limited area of open water and changeable conditions; but perhaps the main thing his formative years taught him was adaptability, a decidedly Kiwi trait if ever there was one. “One of the skills I did learn here at a young age was to be able to watch other people do a sport and to learn off them, to notice different things about how they’re sailing and have things set up, and to be able to adapt things really quickly and see whether you are sailing well or not. A large percentage of our sport is how quickly you can get the boat to go, and when people say someone is a natural sailor, they mean that person has an instinctive way of getting a boat to go faster than it should. And that is something learnt from hours of getting things balanced and learning about what is fast and what isn’t.”

And whatever happened to Jelly Tip? “I honestly don’t know,” Burling shrugs. “I’m not even sure if it was even my boat. Jelly Tip was bought for my brother and I ended up with it. . . Who knows where it is now.” Somewhere in Tauranga, someone may just have a piece of sailing history sitting in the backyard.

As Burling’s skills grew and the awards piled up – repeated questions about when the silverware outgrew the mantle piece and where they live now are all answered with a sheepish shrug and deflective smile – he also had to learn how to juggle his competitive life and the more mundane aspects of youth. Like getting an education.

Having attended Tauranga Boys College (at the same time coincidentally as cricketer Kane Williamson), he embarked on a mechanical engineering degree at Auckland University, but half way through, in his words, he decided to “major in sailing” instead. Competing in European sailing at pretty high levels and then coming back to try and focus on exams was probably never going to work, but while he may not have come out with a degree, he is the first to admit that two years of engineering studies eventually paid off on the water.

“At the Olympic level,” he says, “a lot of it is just a seat-of- your-pants kind of thing, because today you have a single platform that you can’t really change or improve.”

This is, after all, essentially a one-design race and everyone uses virtually identical equipment, so – as Burling says – “It’s a question of how you set it up and how well you can sail it!” But in something like the Americas Cup it’s different; the variables are almost infinite and change – literally – by the hour. And in that fast moving, high-tech environment, knowledge is power.

“I’ve always really liked the engineering side of sailing,” he says, “ever since I was a little kid and making things and trying things on the boats. I’ve always been quite pedantic on having a really clean and well-thought- out boat, not having anything on there that doesn’t need to be there, and having it all neat and tidy.”

And he would be the first to admit that this has translated from the waters of Welcome Bay to Bermuda. “I do feel like I had a good understanding of the systems on board and our team had a strength in the link between the sailing team and the designers, so that we knew how hard we could push it,” he says, again with an achingly acute sense of understatement. “At the end of the day, we are the ones who have to decide whether to back off or take the risk and play the game. But that is always something that I really loved, that whole side of it.”

If it sounds like a calculated risk, it is. Burling has described international level competitive sailing as being a massive game of chess, and though he finesses that description a little, it is clear he still sees it that way in his mind. “It’s a little different,” he says, “in that you can slightly change your pieces from time to time. But yeah, the better you are the less mistakes you make. And while you have to have an underlying plan, you also have to wing it sometimes.

And just as on the board, so too on the water, it is often he who dares – wings it but errs on the right side of the parameters – that wins. As we all saw played out on our

TV screens, in this level of competition things can go spectacularly wrong, and when they do, they do so at speed. Who can forget the heart stopping minutes that stretched in to hours when it seemed New Zealand’s America’s Cup challenge had nose-dived figuratively and literally. But pushing things to the limits, and recovering from the results of dancing too close to those limits, is what marks the difference between winning and losing.

“They’re incredibly cool boats that we sailed in Bermuda,” Burling says. “We were really pushing the technology side in regard to what you could and couldn’t do, particularly in regard to the structural side of things, and there are so many decisions to be made in regard to how many risks to take in regard to that structure. On the windy days during the Cup, you were really looking at the loads on everything! And whether it was luck or good management we seemed to have got it pretty right.”

‘We’ is a very common word in the vocabulary of Peter Burling. It is not the royal

‘We’, it’s just ‘we’ as in ‘us’, in lower case, and it is striking how even in his own mind he edits out Peter Burling and defaults to the team persona. Striking, and also remarkably endearing in someone who is clearly such a very competitive person; you don’t take home the huge string of awards Burling has amassed without wanting to win, though he confesses – a little apologetically – that he’s forgotten just how many World Champs or 49ers wins he has: “You’d have to look it up,” he says. 

“I’ve always been fairly competitive,” he admits, and that really is an understatement, “but I think we have gone through a period in New Zealand when we had heaps of people who were really competitive and who were pushing each other forward. And that has left us in pretty good stead for what we are doing today.

You learn that you have to keep improving and be your own critic and not really rely on too many people to help you out. We had quite minimal coaching when we were young, so that tends to make you more self reliant, and in this sport that is pretty important.”

Burling had barely been back on dry land – and yes he is aware that a huge chunk of his life is spent on the water – when he entered the international Moth class World

Champs at Lake Garda in Italy, and with almost no prep time he placed a very creditable second. Then it was back to New Zealand to continue touring the Cup, but along the way he announced that he would be joining Team Brunel in the Volvo Ocean Race, a decision that will put him up against his long time sailing partner Blair Tuke, who will be part of a different team in the race. The Volvo, formerly known as the Whitbread Round the World Race, demands a whole new skill set, with the crews being expected to much more than just sailors – medical response, sail making, engine and hydraulics repairs are all par for the course, and some legs of the race can last for up to 20 days. It ain’t for the faint hearted.

But having mastered everything from the one-man Moth class to the finely choreographed racing of the America’s Cup, it seems only fitting that he turns his talents to a new challenge. “Its something I’ve always seen as the other side of our sport,” Burling says, “and it has been a great opportunity to jump in with a team that is going to be on the pace. But we’ll have to wait and see how competitive we are, though it will be really good fun and a great chance to develop some skills. I enjoy change and variation and that is why I like doing other events and finding other ways to improve yourself. Everyday is different.”

In addition to being a remarkable success story, perhaps what we like about Peter

Burling is not just the dedication, the classic Kiwi can-do attitude and the team spirit, but the ability to do it all with a composure that borders on, well, almost disinterest.

The perfect antidote to the white-knuckle rides of the America’s Cup Challenge races were Burling’s pitch perfect performances in the post-race press conferences. He was famously accused of being asleep at the wheel, but his opposition and TV viewers alike soon found that to underestimate Peter Burling was to make a grave mistake. By the final races, more than one commentator was calling Burling’s deadpan delivery on and off the water his secret weapon, a star-turn that both baffled - and incrementally and incredibly infuriated - his opposing skipper.

“Yeah,” he says, slipping into trademark laconic post-race monotone, “it’s always been something that, from a young age, there has been pressure in competing and

I’ve always enjoyed that. I generally bring the best out of myself when I have a bit of pressure on, when you are racing for something rather than just going out for a sail.

But during the Cup, you always look quite relaxed because you know what is going on in the background and you know there are so many bits and pieces in place and obviously you have to perform really well and there is a lot of pressure, but you try to get a nice easy message out and keep everyone nice and relaxed. The main part of my job is to sail the boat fast, and we definitely did a good job of that as a team. We had some pretty tough situations to overcome at times, but we pulled through those pretty well. Having to pull through some bit and pieces – some are public knowledge and some aren’t – pulls you closer together and once we got past that first weekend, when we knew we were in with a chance, I don’t think we were ever going to let it go.” 

Bits and pieces. Those would be the near total disaster of a wrecked boat, quite possibly injury or death, and the dashed hopes of a nation who were waiting and watching eagerly at home. But as we know they overcame the bits and pieces – the public and not so public – and took home the sailing world’s greatest trophy.

“The awards are not really why we do it,’ Burling says, “but it is cool to be recognized for what we’ve managed to achieve.” There’s that we again, but then – lo and behold – there is also a brief flash of just Peter Burling. “For me, a lot of it’s about having fun along the way. Win or lose, at the end of it you want to have had fun doing it,” he says.

And behind the cool, calm exterior and the laid back public persona, behind the calculated risk taker and the perennial team player, that is all you probably need to know about Peter Burling. It’s about having fun.

Siblings surfing: Jonas and Elin Tawharu

Jenny Rudd meets two of the world’s top junior surfers, brother and sister, Elin (15) and Jonas (17) Tawharu. They have grown up surfing on their doorstep, here in The Mount.

WORDS JENNY RUDD PHOTOS JEREME AUBERTIN, SALINA GALVAN + CAM NEATE

“Representing New Zealand in any sport gives you the grit and resilience needed to get through difficult times in life.” John Tawharu is the father of Elin and Jonas, two of New Zealand’s brightest surfing stars.

The siblings have just returned from the Azores in Portugal, where they competed in the 2016 VISSLA ISA World Junior Surfing Championship. Elin came 3rd in the U16 girls’ division (the first Kiwi podium finish in nine years), and Jonas was the top Kiwi competitor in the U18 boys’ division. This year was the biggest in the competition’s history, with 370 competitors from five continents, and the first in the era of surfing as an Olympic sport.

We meet Elin and Jonas at the UNO office. In their Mount College uniforms, they look like any other teens, but they are world-class athletes competing at the highest possible level.

IN THE BLOOD

There’s a fair bit of sporty blood flowing through the family; John, a teacher at Omanu Primary School, has represented New Zealand in softball and rugby. Step-mum Jo teaches at Tauranga Intermediate. They both coach the surfing teams at their respective schools. Jo has toured with the New Zealand women’s team as a qualified judge.

“My children have grown up surfing at every opportunity,” says John. “Living by Moa Park in The Mount, they have always been able to skip across the road in their wetsuits. Every weekend for years has been taken up with surfing, either here at home, or out on one of our infamous weekend surf missions. We study the weather reports, checking swell and wind conditions, work out where the best surf will be, and leap into action. It’s such an exciting way to live. Jo makes a stack of homemade pizzas the night before, and we start getting chilly bins, portable chairs, and all our kit out of the basement; everyone’s hunting around for wetsuits, fins, boards and sun-block.”

“Jonas decides exactly what time we need to leave to get the tide at its best, and I always say that Jo is our lucky charm: she almost always calls the surf conditions bang on. The adrenaline’s pumping as we round the last few corners, desperate to get a glimpse of the waves after a few hours on the road. I’ve lost count of the number of times we have zoomed down that hill at Manu Bay, Raglan! I feel very lucky to do these adventures with my partner and children.”

WAVE AFTER WAVE

The ocean has been the backdrop to Elin’s and Jonas’s lives. As toddlers, John would kick a ball into the waves. They would dive in and scoop it up, so the water splashed on their faces, giving them confidence in the water. As small children, John took them out boogie boarding in the rougher white water, to teach them about the power of the ocean. “Ever since she was little, I have always called Elin my Storm Girl. I’d take her out in cyclones, when the white water was smashing around all over the place. She just loved getting rumbled over and over in the waves, and even now she doesn’t ever care about being smashed by huge, dumping waves. That’s her thing – gnarly waves. Jo calls her the Queen of Gnarly.

“As a youngster, Jonas would surf all day with no rest, wearing himself out completely. Then he’d be wrecked for a few days. He’s had to learn to come in and get food and drink every few hours. He has an analytical mind, and has always been particular about his technique, practising over and over again to get it right. Jonas’s love of physics and interest in how things work is ingrained in him; as a nine-year-old, he gave me a lesson on weight transference on his skateboard!“

“The surf season is long and hectic, running from January through to November. And expensive. All us parents worry about how we are going to find the thousands of dollars needed for travel and accommodation as we take our children on the national tour. If they make the national team and go to the World Championships, it’s even more expensive. It always comes together, though. We fundraise hard, doing movie nights, garage sales, and car washing. And the community really gets behind us, which is fantastic. Jo is our master-organiser in the family, making sure everything stays on track. Everything clicks when she’s on board; her brain is amazing.”

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ELIN

“Dad used to push me into two-foot, glassy waves on his fat fish board when I was little, and I would try and stand up. It was exhilarating, and I was hooked. Those are my earliest memories of surfing at my local break, Crossroads. Learning to surf at The Mount has given us such a great advantage. There’s so much coastline here, and the curves, peninsulas and islands create lots of different waves. The Mount has produced a lot of good competition surfers, as it’s a beach break, which is changeable. You have to be flexible to adapt. If you always surf a point break or river mouth, you don’t get enough practice with the smaller, slushy waves.

EARLY ADOPTER

I picked up surfing properly when I was nine. I’ve always been competitive by nature, and won my first national competition when I was eleven, in Taranaki. I was given a greenstone surfboard trophy. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling. And being round the professional surfers was the most exciting thing I’d ever experienced: watching them sign autographs, have their photos taken, and engage in awkward chatter with fans (like me!). Just to be near them, I was frothing as a grom. I wanted to dress like them, look like them and, one day, surf like them. Everything changed after that. I set myself the goal of making the New Zealand team before I turned 18, with a vision in my young head of travelling overseas and representing my country.

NATIONAL TEAM

Then, just as I turned 13, I was selected! I wasn’t expecting it at all. What made it doubly exciting was that Jonas made the team too. I think it’s the first time a brother and sister combo have ever been selected together. Can you imagine the excitement in our house? I have been selected to represent my country each year since then, and this year I won the bronze medal in Portugal in the U16 girls’ division. It was beyond my dreams to make it to the final, surfing with the best in the world at Praia do Monte Verde, where a large swell pounded the beach break. Even though the conditions improved throughout the competition, the waves were pretty unruly and hard to read, so I was seriously stoked to get a medal.

FAMILY

I’m so lucky to have four supportive parents. My mum, Anna, and her partner, Paul, are yoga instructors, so have always practised lots of yoga with us. It’s great for keeping your body strong, open and flexible. All those extra things really give you an edge when competing at a high level. And Mum and Paul are always ready with a good massage after we’ve been training hard. So we can dissect our technique, Jo spends hours filming us, and offers fantastic analytical advice. She’s incredibly supportive of women surfers, having been with Surfing New Zealand for so many years.

My dad has always coached our sports teams, like many other supportive parents, and he and Jo drive us for miles looking for swell. He and Jo have given up so much of themselves to help us succeed. My dad’s always out in the surf. In fact, he’s the biggest grom I know. He’ll be out there when it’s absolute crap, just loving it, for hours on end. I’d surf every day of my life if I could. It’s an addiction, a habit your body and mind craves. I love the exhilaration that comes from the challenge of riding waves and speeding along the face. I’d like to have a go at the professional junior circuit in Australia. Finding funding for that is the biggest challenge. And I also have next year’s World Champs on my mind. I want to win it.”

ELIN’S ACHIEVEMENTS

2011 U12 Women’s Champion, Taranaki. 2013 Ranked 3rd nationally (U17 girls).

2013 New Zealand Primary Schools U13 Girl’s Champion.

2014 U16 Women’s Champion, Gisborne. 2014 Vissla ISA World Junior Surfing Championship, Ecuador (U16 girls), 13th place.

2015 Ranked 2nd nationally (U17 girls).

2015 Vissla ISA World Junior Surfing Championship, California (U16 girls), 16th place. Best result for New Zealand team that year.

2015 Ranked 7th nationally (open women’s).

2016 Ranked 2nd nationally (U17 girls).

2016 U16 and U18 Women’s Champion, and placed 3rd in Open Women’s, Dunedin.

2016 Vissla ISA World Junior Surfing Championship, Azores, Portugal (U16 girls, 3rd place. First Kiwi in 9 years to reach podium, best result in New Zealand team that year, helping New Zealand team to finish 10th overall.

2016 New Zealand Secondary Schools U18 Champion, Raglan Academy Competition.

2016 Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology Secondary School Sportswoman of the Year for Bay of Plenty.

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JONAS

“Surfing is my passion, and I’m completely committed to it. Elin and I are at Mount College during the week, but all weekend we are on the road or at home, surfing. We have done this for as far back as I can remember.

THE HOME FRONT

Having surfed all over our country, as well as many other places in the world, I’d say New Zealand is as good as it gets. Nowhere else will you score pumping waves with epic landscapes and backdrops like we do here. You can surf a volcanic crater at Muriwai, and see great whites and sea lions in Otago. You seem to feel much more immersed in nature and the ocean. Although there are better and more consistent waves in other countries, it still cranks here when it needs to, especially on the east coast of the North Island. But of anywhere, I have the most fun at home, here in The Mount. Even when it’s two-foot mush. We grew up surfing at our local break – the coolest place with the best locals.

AIM HIGH

This year, I won all three Billabong competitions on the circuit here in New Zealand, which put me at number one in the national rankings for the U17 boys. That helped me get selected for the U18 boys’ team to compete at the Junior World Championships this year in the Azores. Elin and I are pretty competitive with each other, but more than that, we support each other. At the Junior World Championships this year, I watched my sister smash her way into the final and get a bronze medal. I was so stoked for her! Supporting her from the beach, with all our teammates, as she competed with the best in the world was an amazing moment.

BUILDING RELATIONS

The cost of competing is really high. Elin and I recognise just how lucky we are to have two sets of parents who do so much to support our surfing financially. We have some fantastic sponsors too, many of whom have become friends, as we’ve spent so much time together on the circuit. Getting sponsored isn’t just about getting stickers on your board: it’s about working together to make sure both sides benefit. Surf companies do want to support young athletes, but they expect us to use and promote their products in a positive way.

ACADEMIC SUCCESS

I really enjoy school. I think having a strong academic background is important, and have just finished year 13 at Mount College. I studied physics, calculus, biology and sport science, and am considering studying further at University of Otago. My greatest achievement so far was recognition from one of the world’s greatest surfers. Around a thousand surfers, from all round the world, entered the ‘King of the Groms’ video competition last year, each submitting a video showcasing their surfing. Californian, Dane Reynolds, picked my video in the top 30. It has spurred me to work harder on my surfing. Looking to the future, I’d definitely like to craft a career in surfing. I’d like to work with companies in the surf industry, and advertise and market for them. But that’s in the future. Right now, I’m concentrating on getting selected for the 2017 New Zealand team and the pro juniors in Australia next year.

JONAS’S ACHIEVEMENTS

2014 April: Vissla ISA World Junior Surfing Championship, Ecuador (U16 boys), 43rd place.

2014 U16 Boys’ Champion, Gisborne. 2015 Ranked 2nd nationally (U17 boys).

2015 Vissla ISA World Junior Surfing Championship, California (U16 boys), 47th place.

2015 Quiksilver King of the Groms World Top 30 U18 Boys’ finalist.

2015 New Zealand Piha Grom Series, (U17 boys), 3rd.

2016 Ranked 1st nationally (U17 boys). 2016 U20 Boys’ Champion, Hawkes Bay.

2016 Vissla ISA World Junior Surfing Championship, Azores, Portugal (U18 boys) 33rd, top performing New Zealand U18 boy.

2016 Champion Billabong U17 Boys Grom series, at Mount Maunganui, Whangamata and Piha.

2016 U18 Boys, Dunedin, 3rd.

Selfie-made mavens: Tash Meys and Kristina Webb

WORDS Jenny Rudd PHOTOS Supplied + Shawn Rolton

We caught up with Instagram influencers TASH and KRISTINA in a whirlwind three weeks before they moved to LA.

The two girls have just finished collaborating on a project which came about directly from Kristina’s Instagram popularity: Color Me Inspired, a colouring book to bring the world to life: maps made up of flowers, sweet treats and beachy scenes. It is total 14-year-old-girl heaven, and the follow up to the hugely popular Color Me Creative.

By the time this magazine is published, the two girls will have moved from the Bay of Plenty to Santa Monica, California, to keep building their already impressive careers. Tash and Kristina prove what an exciting future our world has, as their Millennial Generation steps into the world of business.

THE CONNECTION

Last year Tash hosted a brunch with Viv Conway (21), another Instagram entrepreneur, who sells sportswear she designs, manufactures and distributes on her own Instagram page, @vividsportswearofficial. They invited some friends, thinking it would be fun to hang out together, have a picnic, and use it as a photoshoot opportunity to get content for Instagram. Tash invited Kristina along; they had been going to Paula Knight’s art classes together since they were young, but this was the first time they’d stepped into friendship. Tash knew that Kristina worked in social media too, as Kristina’s @colour_me_ creative brand was going well in America.

“Kristina told me she’d been commissioned to do a second book, but that she was considering turning it down, because the deadline was so tight. We chatted about ideas for the pages, and really hit it off together. A few days later Kristina offered me a contract to collaborate with her on Colour Me Inspired.”

SHARERS

It’s this easy blurring of lines between work and play, as well as looking for ways to blend their business interests to help each other wherever possible, which characterises the working ethos of the Millennials. They tend to enjoy working on social and environmental projects, and because of that, are less inclined to see personal wealth as a measure of their success. Their Generation X parents were taught to play their business cards close to their chest. Information is power. Always keep a trump card up your sleeve to keep on top of office politics. The hard-nosed, shoulder-padded eighties-boardroom Gordon Gekko world is anathema to the Millennial. They have a different way of looking at the world of paid work. “Collaborate, don’t compete,” says Tash.

WHAT IS A MILLENNIAL?

A generation is a group of around 25 years. We have been naming these groups for a while, but not always with any consistency. They aren’t numbered. They get nicknames. And they are open to interpretation. Here’s UNO.’s take: Baby Boomers: born late 40s to early 60s as a result of post-WWII cuddling. They love shiny stuff, cash and gadgets, and stability at work. Generation X: born mid 60s to mid 70s. A bit disaffected, probably as a result of all the daycare they were thrown into whilst their parents were busy getting divorced. They spent their twenties scoffing drugs and dancing all night. Millennials, also known as Generation Y: born early 80s to early 90s. Tash, Kristina and their mates. The children of the Baby Boomers.

Here’s the best description of that age bracket by Harry Wallop, of The Telegraph: Unlike the generation before them, they are smarter, safer, more mature and want to change the world. Their pin-up is Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education campaigner, who survived being shot by the Taliban, and who became the world's youngest ever Nobel Prize recipient. They are the first generation of technology natives. They don’t like being sold to, and they aren’t massive fans of accumulating stuff. They don’t do drugs, they don’t drink, they smash back green smoothies, and only want to do business with ethically minded companies.

“The internet has offered a level playing field for young people wanting to work online. No one asks you how many years of work experience you’ve had or what your grades were like at school. You just start doing it yourself. In fact, it is one of the few careers were being very young is beneficial.”

WHAT IS AN INFLUENCER?

An influencer is generally someone who has over 10,000 Instagram followers. Brands pay them to advertise their products, leveraging off the relationship the influencer has built with their followers. It’s important for brands to choose the influencer carefully. For instance, Kristina might post a pic of her using Faber-Castell Pencils saying ‘I’m totally in love with these new pencils! They are perfect for colouring in details.’

The internet has offered a level playing field for young people wanting to work online. No one asks you how many years of work experience you’ve had or what your grades were like at school. You just start doing it yourself. In fact, it is one of the few careers were being very young is beneficial. The brand would get their product in front of two and a half million people who love colouring in. They know it’s the perfect target market. Think about John Key and his 18,000 people on Instagram. Tash and Kristina could get in front of the equivalent population of nearly the whole North Island just by posting one photo. Wouldn't a politician love that targeted reach?

TASH MEYS @tastefullytash

She posts pictures of impossibly delicious food (all made and styled herself), her art, and all things to do with wellness. She also runs a number of other accounts on behalf of businesses, who have seen hers, and pay her to make the same success of their own.

“Ever since I got my first camera at 11 years old, my friends and I have played ‘photoshoots,’ taking it in turns to be the photographer and model, going on adventures and finding cool locations to shoot. We’d then hugely over-edit them in photoshop and post our work on Bebo. It was a surprise to be asked to do the photos for a fellow student's birthday party but it went well and I did a couple more after that including a twenty-first. I’ve taken photos for a website and recorded a wedding video. Even though it was a bit scary taking on these things at the beginning, I learnt so much from each one and since then have made a point of taking on every opportunity that comes my way.”

DRIVER

Tash is an absolute bundle of energy and drive, her brain zipping off in all directions. She has the ability to create her own opportunities, and the character to be grateful for them. A sharp marketing brain is matched by her creative ability as an artist and photographer. Looking through the global window of Instagram has afforded some huge opportunities, which Tash is grasping with both hands.

“I switched my degree from psychology to consumer food science after getting sick from eating processed foods in my first year, doing some research into nutrition, and becoming fascinated. “Taking photographs of food for my Instagram page has enabled me to exercise my artistic skills; decorating smoothie bowls and creating a food photograph is similar in my eyes to painting a canvas. It's all about the layers, the different textures and the colours. Since I have now built my Instagram to a level of followers where I am considered an influencer in my industry of health and wellness, I can start to branch out and include art, lifestyle and typography. It's interesting how when I left school I decided not to go down the art route, but everything I do seems to come back to it.”

TEACHING OLD DOGS NEW TRICKS

It’s down to Tash's collaborative nature, as well as her ambition and well-placed confidence, that along with one of her clients, whose Instagram page she and Viv Conway run, she organised an Instagram workshop. They invited media agencies to come and learn about Instagram and what it could do for their clients. It was impressive to watch a twenty-two year old hold court with all the creative industry experts, most of whom were about twenty years her senior, explaining how the algorithms in this social media platform work.

In fact when we approached Tash about featuring her, she immediately did some research on us, and asked why we didn’t have an Instagram page, then pitched to us to let her and Viv launch and run it for us. The range of work Tash is being offered is quite astonishing: brands pay to feature their products on @tastefullytash; she has been approached to manage social media for an Australian celebrity; she gets professional photography commissions; she was invited to collaborate on Kristina’s book; and she manages Instagram accounts for several clients in New Zealand, Australia and now America, where she has moved to. Santa Monica is the health and wellness capital of the world. Tash has placed herself right in the centre of it.

As far as Millennials go, Tash Meys leads the field.

Kristina Webb @KRISTINAWEBB

Kristina has been sketching, drawing and painting since her early teens and posting her art online to a huge community of followers: 1.9 million, who clearly adore her. Her art is encouraging of others; there are plenty of positive affirmations dotted about, such as anti-bullying messages. She started on Tumblr, and has moved to Instagram. Kristina has hundreds of fan pages copying her art and reposting originals.

“On my seventeenth birthday, I was in Michigan on a student exchange programme. My host family bought me an iPhone, which I had wanted for so long! Purely to start using Instagram. As I looked around, learning how to use the app, I was surprised to find one of my drawings - the back of a girl holding her ponytail to the side - on an account with a large following. I commented with ‘thank you for posting my drawing.’ The picture was reposted with a credit to me. Within a few days, I had 16,000 followers.”

GROWING POPULARITY

Posting new drawings daily, Kristina’s following swelled. She produced a wide range of art: a series of Starbucks coffee cups, drawn on and decorated with tiny cups, drawn on and decorated with tiny plastic jewels, sketches of celebrities, and she would randomly surprise her fans by doing a portrait of them after they hashtagged #drawmekristina. Celebrities like Tyra Banks, Ed Sheeran and Ariana Grande noticed her art, and commissions started to roll in from big names.

AGENT FOR INFLUENCERS

Kristina’s mum, Janette, knew that Kristina needed an agent. “It was becoming increasingly difficult to know how to negotiate with some of the bigger companies like YouTube and Disney, both of whom had offered Kristina commissions. I was in America with Rochelle, my older daughter, who now manages most of Kristina’s business affairs. We orchestrated a meeting with one of the top agents in the industry, who signed Kristina up on her first interview.”

One of her commissions came from YouTube, who asked her to create a piece of art to recap on the 100 most popular trends of the year. “After watching every single video, I mapped them all out, and finally managed to get about 75 of them into the drawing. YouTube then sent out the artwork as a thank you to everyone who participated.”

Interviewing Kristina in her apartment in the Mount, with her mum making toast in the background, it’s hard to fathom the sheer scale of her success. It seems there are a combination of factors at play: adopting the platform early (four years ago Instagram was in relative infancy); posting daily; responding to her followers in a heartfelt way; and being passionate about adhering to her own creative vision.

The other element is the attainability of Kristina’s success. Her art is very much of a current style. Her fans are able to copy her drawings, and feel they have something to aim for. What sets Kristina apart from the field isn’t anything particularly new - it’s old fashioned practice, determination, and hard work.

PUBLISHED AUTHOR

In 2014 her agent in Los Angeles suggested a book. He had a contact at Harper Collins. Kristina had to produce a 50 page proposal. Janette explains “She went above and beyond, decorating every page of the proposal and giving much more detail than requested. That’s totally indicative of Kristina’s working style and commitment.”

Her first book, Color Me Creative, was a huge hit with tweenies and young teens. The first half is an autobiography (written in the same friendly, personal tone she uses when chatting with her followers on Instagram); the second half is full of creative challenges for her fans to complete inside the book. This was accompanied by a long book tour and the recording of 15 videos in Miami (there are icons in the book to scan with your phone, which unlock short videos of Kristina).

On the book tour, mothers of these young teens thanked her personally for not swearing on her page, or posting photos of herself drinking alcohol. For all her global success, Los Angeles agents, published books, and commissions from the world’s biggest names, all Kristina really wants to do is be left to her own devices with a bundle of coloured pencils, her Bose speaker, some paper and her iPhone.

Getting inspired

Digital content creation. It sounds complicated, but it really means taking pictures of beautiful things, which you make or curate, ready to put on social media channels like Instagram. In the old days, photographers were like demi-gods. Swanning onto shoots, dressed in black polo necks with a team skittering along behind them who responded to demands “I need 12 swans sprayed gold, NOW!” They charged a fortune for their creative genius.

With digital cameras, that’s all changed. If you want to have a go, set up an Instagram account, and start posting pics!

IMPROVE YOUR ART SKILLS WITH PAPAMOA-BASED ARTIST PAULA KNIGHT

"Tash first started coming to me when she was just seven, and Kristina as a young teenager. "They both had a strong desire to listen and learn. To me, they are the best kind of students and I loved showing them how to improve their work. We would go over and add details to portraits and hair, developing shade and colour and finely tuning their abilities until they both developed into confident artists.

“I remember when Kristina was working on a school art project and a trail of purple glitter followed her everywhere. Kristina came and went as she went to the USA, but at one point she was attending both my kids’ and adults’ classes, her desire to learn was so great.”

HAVE A LOOK AT SOME OF THE GREAT LOCAL INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS, AND START ENGAGING @vividsportswearofficial @mtmaunganui @bayofplentynz @tastefullytash @bop.eats

UNO. INSTAGRAM PAGE Viv and Tash have been running it. Fancy yourself as a photographer? Post pics with #unomagnz and we’ll feature the best! Do the art challenges in Colour Me Creative, and hashtag them #cmcbook and #unomagnz.

Peter Williams – King of New Zealand broadcasting

To stay in such a hotly contested industry for four decades, and be held in high regard by peers and the public, Peter Williams has weathered a few storms, stayed flexible, worked hard, and had a good laugh at his own expense from time to time.

WORDS JENNY RUDD PHOTOS QUINN O’CONNELL

“You can go on all you like about the journalism aspect of my job, but really it’s about performing.” The twinkly eyed guardian of living rooms over the last forty years is relaxing with Team UNO. over post-golf refreshment at Latitude in The Mount.

The performer in him clearly enjoys the reaction he gets from us as he spills all sorts of industry jokes. His smooth, clever delivery means we are playing catch-up as he moves from insider stories to smartly voiced political views.

BLOOPERS

“You need to learn pretty quickly from your mistakes, which is easy once you’ve been publicly embarrassed. Good interview questions should be short and to the point, with no opportunity for a yes or no answer.

“At a press conference for the Beach Boys in Christchurch in 1977 I broke the initial silence with ‘Do you think one of the reasons for the Beach Boys’ longevity as a group and staying together for so long-when so many other groups of your generation have broken up – is that you were all friends at high school, or because some of you are related, being brothers and a cousin; are those close relationships the major reason you are still playing more than fifteen years after you first started playing together in California all those years ago?’ Even as the words were coming out I wished I would stop. Anyway, Dennis Wilson replied, ‘Yes’.

“Forty years ago superstars such as The Beach Boys, Kenny Rogers and Elton John all held press conferences where non-entertainment journalists, such as myself, were let loose on them. That would never happen now. There was none of the tight control which exists today.”

EXOTIC FOREIGNER

“Halfway through my last year at school in Oamaru, I went to the States as an AFS foreign exchange student in upstate New York. The school had a radio club which had half an hour each week on the local radio station on Saturday mornings. I can’t imagine any of the big commercial stations today allowing a bunch of teenagers to chat away about whatever they want on primetime slots, but they did back then. I was asked to be interviewed on the basis I had a funny accent.

“They said I had a good voice and so invited me to join the radio club. That was my first taste of broadcasting, apart from the kids’ radio quiz competitions in Invercargill I often entered, and sometimes won!”

DUNEDIN RADIO

“On my return to New Zealand from the States, I had a few months to kill before going to university, so I walked into Radio Otago in Dunedin at the age of 18 and asked for a job. I had a half-decent school record, wasn’t bad at English, had sat ATCL speech exams (and failed!) and had some performing skills after being the lead in a few school plays. But I had never been to a tertiary institution, and still haven’t. They took a punt on me as a filing clerk in the copy and advertising department. I was in.

“By today’s standards, Radio Otago was a huge operation. It was called 4XO, and had a signal which barely took it out of Dunedin City. Whole radio networks were virtually unheard of then and network TV was only a couple of years old in 1972. There was a staff of over 30, including six or seven journalists producing news bulletins from 6am until midnight. Nowadays I doubt if there are six radio journalists in the whole of Otago and Southland.

“I liked the concept of telling stories on radio. The journalistic side interested me more than being a music DJ. I thought the career looked rosier, although my mate Brian Kelly did very well on that path.

“Because I had an interest in sport, I was given the opportunity to be a sports reporter. The Sports Editor left and I was given his job at the grand old age of 19 with a staff of just me. I was also the DJ on the midnight-to-dawn shift. What a life for a teenager.”

Any thoughts of a university education disappeared with a full-time job paying $38 a week. The rent on Peter’s flat was $6 a week. Good times.

There were big opportunities in what was then called the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation (NZBC) and Peter passed the audition to become an announcer. This involved roving round the country at the NZBC’s whim to Masterton, Blenheim, Invercargill and Christchurch for about seven years. Then came the move to TV in 1979.

COMMERCIAL TV

“A background in radio was invaluable for my subsequent life in TV. You can do all the tertiary education courses you like, but there’s nothing like on-the-job, real-life training. That’s why I feel sorry for young people trying to get into the industry today. They spend thousands on tertiary courses of varying quality and aren’t guaranteed a job at the end of it; employers now won’t hire until the course has been completed.

“There’s no way an 18-year-old school leaver could get a job today the way I did – or the way Mike Hosking and Paul Henry did too. There aren’t too many university degrees amongst the old grunts of broadcasting.”

MONEY AND SPORTS

In the early years of Peter’s career, there was quite a bit of money to be made from advertisers by news broadcasters. Newspapers understood how to capitalise on the limited supply of advertising channels available and did well, making good money and financing well-documented jollies for journalists over the years. Television broadcasting didn’t fare so well, possibly not capitalising on the potential of their reach, and being state owned, having different drivers for success. As a result, there have always been big budget constraints in broadcasting.

His sports commentary roles required a great deal of verbal dexterity, as New Zealand TV changed in 1975 from a state-owned broadcasting behemoth to the snippy demands of a commercially driven enterprise.

“In the good old days, there was hardly any advertising at all during sports matches and none at all on Sundays. We could commentate without the worry of any commercial breaks. The duration of half time in rugby matches didn’t matter much at all.

“In the 80s, their duration became very important. We used to have some huge fights with the Rugby Union to try and get them to make half time last five minutes so we could squeeze in a four-minute commercial break. Often, by the time we were back on air, a couple of minutes had already been played with game-changing tries already scored. When we complained, the officials said the players didn’t want to get cold.!

POLITICAL APATHY

Having been exposed to the biggest newsworthy stories of the last half century, Peter has developed an understanding of what the public deems news.

“Above all, it has to be interesting, and it has to be told in an interesting way. Crime has been a staple of news-reporting ever since news-reporting was invented through distributed pamphlets in the 18th century. At times I think there is too much crime-reporting, and there’s definitely a type of crime which is more fascinating than others.

“More interest is shown if the victim is white and middle class: even more so when both the victim and the perpetrator come from the same demographic, and that interest is shown by the vast majority of us who don’t commit that level of crime. For instance, the death of a female jogger in Remuera in January sent a real shiver around the country.

“Yet the biggest scandals in our community, domestic violence and child abuse, are becoming so common that very little of it is reported. It’s almost as if we’re inured or desensitised to it. That is truly sad.

“There is still considerable reporting of political matters; not so much about parliamentary matters, more about the political personalities who are an integral part of TV news.

“It’s become obvious that the community’s political engagement is reducing, almost year on year. Election turnouts illustrate the apathy perfectly, particularly at local government level. It’s actually a sad reflection on us as a nation. I always make the effort to vote, even for the District Health Board. If I don’t vote, then I have no right to complain about politicians’ decisions.

“The reduction in the community’s political engagement has led to a change in the way politics is reported; there’s little reporting and analysis about policy and the actual laws our parliament passes. But there’s plenty of reporting done about the personalities who make those laws, and of the consequences of those policies and laws.

“The most attention-grabbing news is about conflict and argument. Whether it’s war, politics, sport or community issues, the news industry just loves conflict, and the more the better. If it bleeds, it leads.”

SPOTLIGHT

Peter’s broadcasting career is littered with glittery accomplishments: seven times presenter of the Olympic Games and the Winter Olympics in Nagano; six times Commonwealth Games presenter; commentator of all New Zealand’s home international cricket matches in the eighties, including New Zealand’s famous win over the West Indies in 1980 and the nail-biting test win over Pakistan in 1985; newsreader on some of the biggest news stories in New Zealand’s history, including the devastating Pike River disaster in 2010 and the uplifting Rugby World Cup Victory last year. However his upcoming appointment is one he is immeasurably proud of.

“I will be presenting Mastermind, which is back on TV One this year for the first time since 1990.” The show was immensely popular in New Zealand during the 1970s and 1980s but was dropped when TV became a big commercial animal with profit its major motive in the 1990s. High brow quiz shows didn’t meet the philosophy of the time, despite its apparent commercial potential.

“Excitingly, it’s been brought back based on its enduring popularity on the BBC and I’m privileged to get the big job up front. It’ll be broadcast on Sunday nights, starting in May, and we’ll start recording the heats at Easter. I’m really looking forward to it as it’s a considerable departure from my regular job, but still a high-quality show designed to be hugely entertaining and informative at the same time.

“There’s no big cash prize. The series winner gets…the Mastermind Chair! I’m following in the footsteps of one of New Zealand’s greatest broadcasting legends, Peter Sinclair; pretty big boots to fill.” There’s little question he’s up to it.

It is clear, talking to Peter Williams, just how much his vast experience has shaped him. There’s no hiding place in a lifetime in the public eye, and ear; self-critical honesty coupled with a wry humour has served him well. It is equally clear his shrewd eye for spotting what will catch his listeners’ interest has given him an informed and colourful view on the world. Peter is an icon of our country.

“New Zealand were playing South Korea in a Davis Cup tie and I was tasked with interviewing a member of the South Korean media who was covering the tie to find out a little about tennis over there. I went up to the press box, saw a foreign-looking gentleman, and very politely, and very slowly, introduced myself.

‘Hello,…Peter…Williams,…Radio…New…Zealand…Sport….Pleased…to…meet…you.”

The guy smiled and said, in a strong Kiwi accent, ‘Oh hi Peter. I’m Eddie Kwok from the New Zealand Herald’.”

“At the end of a day’s play in a cricket test, we were filling in a few minutes until it was time to go off-air. I was interviewing an Australian batsman called Graeme Wood who, that day, had made a really good test century but had been dismissed just before stumps, playing a pretty bad shot, leaving his team in a very precarious position. So I asked him a deliberately insulting question,

‘Did you feel irresponsible for getting out?’

“He muttered and stumbled his way through an answer to my appalling question and no doubt went away frustrated. Later that night I was having dinner at an up-market Auckland restaurant with a young lady who was not my wife and I was handed a note.

Dear Mr Williams, it read, I hope you are not going to be irresponsible tonight. Signed Graeme Wood.”

Analogue Baby

3ZB Christchurch

One day I hosted the breakfast show on 3ZB while running from Cathedral Square in Christchurch to New Brighton, the route of the annual City-to-Surf run. It was 14km and my show was on from 6 am until 9 am so it was a pretty slow run! I talked along the whole route, between music and news bulletins. That was the day before the actual run, to drum up some publicity. The next day I ran it for real in 75 minutes.

2ZD Masterton Breakfast OB

I was working as an announcer on the local radio station – call sign 2ZD. There was none of this fancy branding like Coast or The Hits or Newstalk in those days.  An ice-show called something like Ice Follies toured the country in 1974, stopping in almost every provincial town. No doubt they came to Tauranga too. It was quite a big deal to have a sophisticated ice-show come to town. They put down a rink on the stage of the Regent Theatre in Masterton and performed for a couple of nights.

We broadcast the entire breakfast show from the theatre. It seems extraordinary now but it looks like we took turntables with us to play records from the venue! We interviewed some of the performers and invited members of the public to come down to watch the glamour of recording a real live radio show and to see rehearsals. I note the date was March 6th 1974. That was the day of my 20th birthday. They let us loose on the airwaves young in those days. It was also the day I would have become legally allowed to drink alcohol.

4ZA Invercargill

The group the Hues Corporation was an American soul group from the 1970s. They had huge hits with Rock the Boat and Freedom for the Stallion.

Invercargill was a long way from home to be promoting your hit record.

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