In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 60, our guest is The Right Honourable David Seymour, Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand and Leader of the Act Party.

To many of us, it seems like David Seymour has been in the public eye for so long that we feel like we know him. And yet, as it turns out, we know very little.

He grew up in a Whangarei family, with working parents and a personal ambition shaped partly by a mother who suffered from a disability.

As a youngster he was exposed to business and voluntary work, all of which drove a unique work ethic and a passion for the freedoms his generation took for granted.

He left the family home for life as a boarder at Auckland Grammar and soon he was at Auckland University studying for degrees in Engineering and Philosophy. He had to work his way through university to make ends meet and talks of forty hour weeks bookended by lectures and assignments.

His early career focussed on engineering until the opportunity came to work for a Canadian think tank and a new career path was formed, one that would ultimately see him return to New Zealand, becoming an MP and Act party leader in 2014.

On the Leaders Getting Coffee Podcast, David Seymour speaks with Bruce Cotterill about the loneliness of his early years as parliament’s sole Act MP and his focus on working with other politicians, many of whom were not natural bedfellows, to get his End of Life Choice Act passed into law as a result of a referendum in 2020.

That led to him ushering in nine additional MP’s in 2020 and Act’s role in parliament has been secured as a result.

David Seymour speaks proudly about taking on some of parliament’s tougher challenges, including charter schools, regulatory reform, and the treaty principles bill, as well as the End of Life legislation.

This is a man who is passionate about personal freedoms and making New Zealand a better and more productive place for it’s people. And as one of parliament’s best communicators, he is very clear on some of the challenges ahead.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 59, our guest is Lisa King, the inspirational founder of Eat My Lunch and more recently alcohol free cocktail brand, Free AF.

She was born in Hong Kong and moved to New Zealand at the age of two. Her hardworking parents instilled a passion for education and an enthusiasm for entrepreneurial flair.

Lisa King didn’t waste that business oriented zest for life. A couple of university degrees provided her ticket to her dream jobs, in big corporate organisations that could show her the world.

The New Zealand Daily Board sent her to the Philippines, Unilever took her to the UK and the arrival of her first child brought her home. Roles in the heart of FMCG business followed at Bluebird, Cadbury and eventually back to the newly named Fonterra.

But a need to do something with purpose was stirring and, inspired by an advertisement for shoes – buy one get one free – she set up a school lunch programme that followed that same model. If sponsors would pay for a school lunch, her team would deliver that and another to students in need. It was called “Eat My Lunch” and it arrived at a time when some schools had 50 kids going without a midday meal.

They prepared the lunches in her lounge at first, and at its peak her team were delivering 2,600 free lunches and the same number of paid ones, across 45 schools, every day.

With the arrival of the Government’s school lunch programme, her work there was done and another purpose was waiting.

Lisa had decided to give up drinking alcohol, and was astounded by the social pressures and the awkward questions. She’d decided that the conversation around not drinking was broken.

And so, in 2020, despite Covid and lockdowns and plenty of reasons not to, she assembled a team and created a brand, developed recipes, and launched Free AF, an alcohol free cocktail brand with a goal to reduce the alcohol in people’s lives without sacrificing the experience.

On the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Lisa King speaks to Bruce Cotterill about, not one, but two entrepreneurial journeys, the lessons she’s learned and the opportunities ahead. Free AF now features in more than 4,000 stores across the USA, including Whole Foods, Target and Walmart and she is very open about the hard work involved in getting established in a massive market, including the importance of keeping her team small and action orientated, jumping time zones and the funding challenges associated with order sizes you don’t expect.

This is a case study in purpose from someone who is in the process of building a global brand. It’s a must listen for every aspiring entrepreneur. Spoiler alert… it’s a lot of hard work!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In Leaders Getting Coffee episode 58, our guest Sharon Zollner, Chief Economist at ANZ Bank.

At a time when the economic recovery in New Zealand is threatened, yet again, by a major international shock, we thought it was worthwhile to host one of the Country’s leading economists on Leaders Getting Coffee. And we weren’t disappointed. This week’s guest is one of the most entertaining economists we could wish to speak to.

A self-confessed geeky kid, and cricket tragic, Sharon Zollner grew up in rural Canterbury in a farming family near Methven. She excelled at school, particularly it seems in English and Mathematics, capabilities which influenced her decision to study English Literature and Economics.

She left Canterbury University with a Masters in Commerce and majors in Economics and English Literature, and headed to the New Zealand Reserve Bank to start what has become an amazingly successful career.

A stint with Norway’s central bank followed, where her work included developing a macro economic model for the Norwegian economy.

Returning to New Zealand, her climb up the ranks of Bank Economists has been rapid and she speaks openly about becoming the Chief Economist at ANZ in 2017, just ahead of a change in government and prior to the disruption created by Covid 19.

On the Leaders Getting Coffee podcast Sharon Zollner speaks to Bruce Cotterill about the current state of the New Zealand economy, which she suggests is more resilient that many of us might expect.

She is also refreshingly open about the impacts of war in the Middle East and the associated panic around oil prices and supplies, and the likely stages that economies will go through as the conflict continues.

As you might expect, Zollner reels off economic terms and statistics in an uncomplicated manner that is easy to understand and entertaining to listen to. Her lessons from Norway are interesting given the similarity of that economy to that of New Zealand, and the differing constraints that the two countries must operate within.

Most importantly, she is positive about the current state of New Zealand, despite the obvious headwinds, and one wishes that her enthusiasm for our future should be contagious.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.