The Real Price of Growth | 4 Founders on What Scaling Actually Costs | Ways to Wealth EP169

The Real Price of Growth | 4 Founders on What Scaling Actually Costs | Ways to Wealth EP169

Every founder talks about growth. Raise the round, hit the milestones, scale the team. Nobody warns you about the price tag that doesn't show up on a spreadsheet.In this compilation episode of Ways to Wealth, Charlie Meaden pulls together four conversations that each answer the same uncomfortable question from a completely different angle.Luigi Lenguito (BforeAI) proved traction in the US before anyone would write a cheque, then lost product-market fit four months after closing the round. Simon Millar (Pure Advantage) spent 22 years in Hollywood managing A-list talent and walked away from all of it after one afternoon in a broken air-conditioned cinema. Henry Aung (Octopass) spent $100K and three years building a fintech in Myanmar and ran the brutal maths on what doing nothing would have returned instead. Sayantan Bhattacharya (Love Your Body) moved to the US not to sell, but to learn how global wellness brands operate before scaling Love Your Body.Four founders. Four very different journeys. One truth: growth always costs more than you think.Connect with Luigi Lenguito: https://www.linkedin.com/in/llenguito/ Learn more about Pure Advantage: https://pureadvantage.org/ Connect with Henry Aung: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henryaung/ Connect with Sayantan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sayantan-bhattacharya-1084a4250/ Watch every episode of Ways to Wealth: https://www.eccuity.com/podcasts Learn more about eccuity: https://eccuity.comTimestamps:00:00 Introduction 00:52 Luigi06:36 Simon11:50 Henry15:21 Sayantan#WaysToWealth #Founders #Startups #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth

Told She Couldn't Be a Pilot Because She Was a Woman, with Deborah Crowe | Ways to Wealth 168

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Deborah Crowe, a serial entrepreneur, engineer, and circular economy leader whose career has taken more turns than almost anyone we've had on the show. Deborah grew up on a sheep and grain farm in Southland, the oldest of four in a family with 55 first cousins. She wanted to be an astronaut, until the Air Force told her women weren't allowed to be pilots. So, she became an electrical engineer instead, then rebranded into IT when she realised the people there earned three times what she did. In 2000 she co-founded Run the Red, the company that taught New Zealand how to text, and sold it to Pushpay in 2014. That exit is where her story gets interesting. Somewhere in her mid-40s, the question stopped being "what can I build?" and became "what's the point?" She threw herself into purpose-driven work, decarbonising the textile industry, commercialising climate science, trying to do less harm and more good. And it nearly broke her. In one of the most honest conversations we've recorded, Deborah talks about swinging from being all head to all heart, the burnout that came from never setting boundaries, and what it actually took to put herself back at the centre of her own life. She also shares an observation about why so many businesses survive far longer than they should, and what New Zealand keeps getting wrong about where it puts its money. Watch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here: www.eccuity.com/podcasts Learn more about Deborah here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborahcrowe/ #waystowealth #entrepreneurship #circulareconomy #burnout #purpose #nzbusiness #founders #exits #sustainability #leadership #womeninbusiness #impactinvesting #wellbeing #wealthbuilding

No One Cares What You Post, with Nathan James

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Nathan James, executive director of The Attention Seeker, a social media agency that pulled in 1.2 billion organic views last year across just 20 clients. Nathan has spent 30 years in advertising. He's worked with Nike, Adidas, PlayStation, Budweiser, and the BBC, and lived in New York, London, Amsterdam, and Stockholm before landing in Auckland. So when he talks about how attention actually works, he's not guessing. But the most interesting part of his story isn't the billion views. It's what came before. Nathan built his own agency, six staff, a couple of million in revenue, a beautiful studio space, and watched it fall apart when COVID hit because he didn't understand the one thing nobody had ever taught him. He's refreshingly honest about exactly what went wrong and why he could rebuild it tomorrow if he had to. The thing he's learned since is something most people desperately need to hear, and it cuts against everything we tell ourselves before we put anything into the world. There is no crowd waiting to judge you. No one is watching as closely as you think. The only thing standing between you and the thing you want to build is the belief that it has to be perfect before you start. Nathan has built an audience of millions on the opposite idea, and in this conversation he explains exactly how. Watch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here: www.eccuity.com/podcasts Learn more about Nathan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanjames-cooper/ Learn more about Nathan's company here: https://www.attnseeker.com/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:47 Nathan 04:42 Beginnings 07:19 Challenges 15:41 The Future 18:48 Why Video 23:44 Success 32:00 Outro #waystowealth #socialmedia #content #marketing #attention #personalbranding #linkedin #entrepreneurship #nzbusiness #advertising #contentcreation #creators #ai #wealthbuilding

The CEO Who Doesn't Measure Wealth in Money, with Matt Mudford

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Matt Mudford, CEO of Ngāpuhi Asset Holding Company, the commercial arm of the largest iwi in New Zealand.On paper, Matt runs a $100 million portfolio. In practice, he thinks about something most CEOs never have to. He is not managing money for shareholders who want a return next quarter. He is managing it for 200,000 people, most of them young, many of them paycheck to paycheck, across generations that stretch back to the signing of He Whakaputanga and forward to grandchildren not yet born.Matt grew up working class in South Auckland. His dad worked at Fisher and Paykel before driving taxis. His mum was a social worker. He watched his cousins, who came from the same grandparents, face challenges he somehow got a clear run from. That gap never sat right with him, and it became the thing that drives everything he does now.What makes this conversation different from almost any other you'll hear with someone running a fund this size is what Matt says he wants to be remembered for. It isn't the assets he grows or the returns he makes. He'll tell you the deals get done over a cup of tea, that his guiding lights are his ancestors and his mokopuna, and that he refuses to let a Treaty settlement he can't control define the future of his people. He is building that future now, on his own terms, and he is not waiting for permission.This might be the most important conversation we've had on the show.Watch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here [www.eccuity.com/podcasts]Learn more about Matt here [https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-mudford-21398b1b8/]Learn more about Ngāpuhi Asset Holding Company here [https://www.linkedin.com/company/ngapuhiassetholdingco/]Timestamps: 00:00 Intro01:01 Who is Matt?02:19 Making Change04:11 Opportunities 07:00 Access 15:29 Sovereignty 17:13 Young People19:44 Internships32:18 Excitement35:26 Community38:45 Challenge47:43 Equality#waystowealth #ngāpuhi #māori #iwi #economicsovereignty #leadership #nzbusiness #investing #intergenerationalwealth #community #assetmanagement #aotearoa #wealthbeyondmoney #wealthbuilding

AI Won't Replace You, But This Will, with Thomasge Aravinda

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Thomasge Aravinda, founder of CareerCraft and a supply chain professional who spent 15 years working across Sri Lanka, Dubai, Singapore, and New Zealand before building a business around the question most people are too comfortable to ask: is my career still going to exist? Thomasge started helping friends land jobs during COVID when the market seized up and nobody knew what to do. He was good at it. People started telling him to turn it into something real. When he dug into the research, he found that almost everything people rely on to advance their careers, the CV, the LinkedIn profile, the degree, is about to stop being enough. Within the next few years, he believes you will need video just to prove you are a real person and not a bot. His message is uncomfortable. Job titles as we know them are disappearing. The preliminary tasks that graduates used to cut their teeth on are being automated. A student who enters the workforce in 2027 won't be able to get the same internship that was available in 2023. And most people, and most organisations, are not preparing for any of it. The biggest barrier he faces isn't technology. It's mindset. People hear it, they understand it, and they choose not to act on it. He compares it to the start of the industrial revolution when workers smashed the machines because they couldn't accept what was coming. Watch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here [www.eccuity.com/podcasts] Learn more about Thomasge here [https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasge-careercraft/] Learn more about Thomasge's company here [https://careercraft.lk/] Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:42 Who is Thomasge 01:19 What Thomasge does 01:52 His Pathway 10:04 Ownership 15:06 Goals 22:59 Challenges 25:47 The Edge 30:46 Outro #waystowealth #careercraft #careers #ai #futureofwork #jobsearch #cv #automation #graduates #migration #nzbusiness #supplychain #entrepreneurship #wealthbuilding