Brought to you by Plato, the full-service marketing agency that drives real business performance. Connect with the team: https://platocreative.co.nz/

Stacey Banfield left school at 16 to work on the Chanel counter at Ballantynes. Today she runs a team of 12 artists under the SB Collective, is booked two years ahead for weddings, and has never spent a dollar on advertising. She also put her life savings into launching her own product brand, Soleil & Soul Beauty.

Andy and Stacey cover how weekend freelance work outgrew her counter wage, and the accountant exercise that showed she was sending $30,000 of work a year to other artists and getting almost no thanks for it. They talk about why she hires for people skills over makeup skills, how she handles wedding-morning drama, and why chasing follower counts doesn’t matter when word of mouth fills the book. She also explains the gap she saw in the market for brush cleansers, the NZ-native ingredient Totarol, and getting stocked back where she started.

Recorded at Red Nine | businesses building Canterbury

Thanks to Plato, helping ambitious brands and businesses scale faster through strategic full-service marketing. Find out how they can help you grow: https://platocreative.co.nz/

00:00 Intro

00:56 SB Collective vs Stacey Banfield Makeup Artist

02:27 Handing clients to the team and keeping the quality up

03:47 Leaving school at 16 to get into makeup

05:48 From the Chanel counter to going full time

07:49 Low risk, a beauty blog and $30k of turned-away work

10:19 What a wedding morning actually looks like

12:20 Difficult bridesmaids and being the bad guy

15:35 Why people skills beat makeup skills

17:43 Why she’s stayed in Christchurch

19:01 Chanel, Tom Ford, MAC and the blogging era

21:10 No comments, still booked two years in advance

23:05 Launching Soleil & Soul Beauty

26:19 Skin first: SPF, actives and TikTok trends

32:30 Flown to New York by Clinique

35:04 Brush cleansers, Totarol and stocking at Ballantynes

37:30 Advice for two years into business

38:58 Quick makeup and skincare tips

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

Brought to you by Plato, the full-service marketing agency that drives real business performance. Connect with the team: https://platocreative.co.nz/

Margo Flanagan is co-founder and head of product at Two Raw Sisters, the recipe app and cookbook brand she runs with her sister Rosa. What began as two sisters finding their way back to good food after their own health journeys has become a household name: six cookbooks, an app built around swapping in whatever’s in your fridge, and an audience that’s 70% aged 50 and over.

Margo and Andy cover how the business grew from a first cookbook that publishers expected to sell 400 copies (it sold 800 in the first hour), why they refuse to put macro breakdowns on recipes, and the “intelligently lazy” system of twenty minutes on a Sunday. Margo also explains how they’ve pivoted from cooking school to catering to web app to mobile app, why failing fast has been central to their success, and why they’ve deliberately chosen a manageable business over chasing $100 million. Plus her advice for any founder: find your North Star and say no to anything that doesn’t fit, even a $20,000 deal.

Thanks again to Plato, helping ambitious brands and businesses scale faster through strategic full-service marketing. Find out how they can help you grow: https://platocreative.co.nz/

Recorded at Red Nine | businesses building Canterbury

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

This episode is brought to you by Plato, the full-service marketing agency that drives real business performance. Connect with the team: https://platocreative.co.nz/

Business Canterbury has backed local businesses since 1859, and Chief Executive Leeann Watson says the region is doing better than most of the country right now.

Andy sits down with Leeann to unpack what Business Canterbury actually does. That covers HR advice lines and training, the Canterbury Trusted endorsement, and lobbying Wellington on the things that hurt small businesses, like a provisional tax date in the middle of January. They get into why Canterbury is outperforming the other main centres: $13.1 million from one Super Round weekend at the new stadium, record university enrolments, and 43,000 people moving south since 2018.

Leeann also explains Canterbury Ambition, a private-sector-led plan that brings 11 local authorities together around one ask of government. She shares how she protects time to work on the business rather than in it, and gives honest advice for anyone in their first couple of years of running a business.

Find out more at businesscanterbury.co.nz or call 0800 50 50 96.

Plato helps ambitious brands and businesses scale faster through strategic full-service marketing. Find out how they can help you grow: https://platocreative.co.nz/

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

Caroline Harvie-Teare is Chief Executive of Venues Ōtautahi, the council-owned organisation that runs One New Zealand Stadium, Christchurch Town Hall, Wolfbrook Arena, Hagley Oval and events at the Air Force Museum.

We recorded just after the stadium's opening Super Round weekend. Caroline talks through how a stadium makes money: flat fees against ticket-share deals, bidding against other cities for All Blacks tests and big concerts, and why the NZ Rugby Union has to price an extra 5,000 temporary seats to cover what they cost. She explains why Venues Ōtautahi dropped its plan to run the food itself and brought in local hospitality instead, and why a stadium with no car parks can work.

She also covers her career, which took her from Pyne Gould Guinness and PGG Wrightson to the Earthquake Recovery Authority and Christchurch Airport. She came back to Venues Ōtautahi just in time to cut the business by 60% in the first COVID lockdown. She closes with her business advice for Red Nine: relationships come first, and there's a simple test for who you should work with.

This episode is brought to you by Plato, the full-service marketing agency that drives real business performance. Click the link to connect with the team.

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

Christchurch has a space plane, a CAR-T cancer therapy hub and the world's best pumpkin brushes — and most of us had no idea. Ali Adams, CEO of ChristchurchNZ, on the four sectors the city is betting on, why aerospace companies choose Kaitorete Spit, and the crisis nearly every founder-led business runs into.

Everyone talks about growth — Plato is the team that actually achieves it. Connect with them at https://platocreative.co.nz

Guest: Ali Adams, Chief Executive, ChristchurchNZ — https://www.christchurchnz.com Sponsor: Plato — https://platocreative.co.nz Host: Andy Rowe, Red Nine Studios

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

John Plato left school at fifteen and spent ten years as a diesel mechanic. In 2007 — at the kitchen table of a Linwood townhouse, with $3,500 in the bank and the GFC underway — he and his wife Lisa started an agency. Nearly twenty years later Plato is the South Island's largest full-service agency, and John is turning the derelict New City Hotel on Colombo Street into a 1,600sqm home for it.

This one goes deep on the commercial side of running an agency, and the honest parts most people leave out. John explains why Plato sets business strategy rather than just marketing — he sits on four of his clients' boards — and why the piece most agencies miss isn't creating demand, it's making sure the business can actually deliver on it.

He's also straight about the mistakes. Growing from 55 to 87 staff in six months during the COVID boom and making no more money at the bigger size. Five years of no holidays, living at the office. The six-month question he now asks his business partners: are we a better business than we were six months ago?

Plus: why he's never once looked at a qualification when hiring, what he'd tell a business two years in, and what's going inside the new HQ — gym, wellness centre with saunas and ice baths, a hidden whiskey room and a rooftop bar.

Find Plato Website: https://platocreative.co.nz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/platocreative Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/platocreative Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/platocreative

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

What if a boozy rosé lunch and a magnitude 7.1 earthquake were the unlikely origins of a children's book business? That's exactly the story Hannah Davison tells in this episode.

Hannah is the co-founder of My Big Moments — a range of children's books backed by neuroscience, child psychology and play therapy, designed to help kids aged 2–7 navigate the big milestones and challenges of early life. Think: new siblings, starting school, going to hospital, grief and loss, and building resilience. The books can even be personalised, putting your child in the story as the empowered helper rather than the one in distress.

In this conversation, Hannah talks about how the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake — waking up to a freight train sound, running through broken glass in bare feet, jumpstarting a car with bricks falling off the roof — drove home exactly why this project had to exist.

She also gets into the science behind why hearing your own name fires your neurons, the Einstein quote that guides her business philosophy, how a spontaneous conversation about leaking boobs led to a multi-award-winning podcast, and why trusting your intuition might be the best business advice there is.

📚 My Big Moments

🌐 Website: https://mybigmoments.com

📸 Instagram: @mybigmoments

🎙️ Untidy Podcast (Hannah & Matilda Green)

🌐 Website: https://www.untidypodcast.com

📸 Instagram: @untidypodcast

🎙️ Red Nine Studios

🌐 Website: https://www.redninestudios.com

📸 Instagram: @recordedatrednine

🎧 Recorded at: @redninestudios

Chapters

0:00 – Intro

0:39 – What is My Big Moments?

1:11 – The books: topics, ages, and what they actually do

3:32 – Starting school, hospital visits, grief — why the big stuff matters

6:18 – Born over a boozy rosé lunch with business partner Flicka Williams

7:37 – The 2016 Kaikōura earthquake: waking up to a freight train

9:46 – "There is nothing I can do to protect my children"

11:11 – Getting out of the house: bricks, glass, bare feet

13:11 – Jumpstarting the car with the roof falling apart

15:03 – Pushing boulders off the road in your pyjamas

16:38 – The morning after: it wasn't a bad dream

16:58 – How the earthquake became the "why" behind the books

18:28 – Resilience, trauma, and turning hard experiences into superpowers

19:44 – Working with neuroscientists, psychologists and play therapists

21:40 – Why personalisation isn't just cute — it fires neurons

22:14 – Three years of work, then COVID hits the launch

24:00 – The unstoppable drive to put this thing into the world

25:10 – Pivoting during COVID: supporting parents instead of selling

26:28 – How Matilda Green came into the picture

28:29 – The conversation that became the Untidy podcast

30:09 – Business advice: what would you tell Red9 Studios?

30:58 – The Einstein quote that guides everything

32:04 – Trusting your intuition: 100% alignment, every time

33:23 – Expand your consciousness — the best advice Hannah has

34:14 – Where to find My Big Moments and Untidy

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

Amy from Addie & Lou joins us on Recorded at Red Nine to share the real story behind building a boutique retail business.

From growing up in Kaikōura and working as a radiographer, to opening a homewares store that now has locations in both Kaikōura and Christchurch, Amy’s journey is full of lessons, risks and a few hilarious mistakes along the way.

Including the time she accidentally ordered $17,000 worth of candles.

We talk about:

• Starting a retail business with no formal business experience

• The early mistakes every founder makes

• Why the Addie & Lou café was never part of the original plan

• The reality of running a retail store during tough economic times

• Learning about margins, stock and imports the hard way

• And the unexpected stories that come with running a business

Recorded at Red Nine is a podcast exploring the stories of the people building businesses across Canterbury and beyond.

⸻

🎙 Hosted by Andy Rowe

📍 Recorded at Red Nine Studios – Christchurch

🌍 Businesses Building Canterbury

CHAPTERS

01:44 Why They Had a Wedding in Bali

03:24 What Is Addie & Lou?

04:48 Rebranding the Store in 4 Days

05:51 Starting a Business Just Before COVID

06:56 Growing Up Working on a Farm

08:05 Why She Started the Business

09:17 What Addie & Lou Actually Is

10:41 Opening the Christchurch Store

12:29 The Cafe That Was Never the Plan

14:09 Lessons from Running a Business

15:30 The $17,000 Candle Order

17:39 Learning Business the Hard Way

20:17 How Retail Buying Works

21:17 Are They in the Black or the Red?

22:15 The Catfish Dating Story

26:19 Meeting Her Partner Dan

27:22 Moving Into Wholesale

28:51 Where to Find Addie & Lou

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