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

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

Inside the World's Most Exclusive Events, with Alexa Karpova | Ways to Wealth EP164

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Alexa Karpova, co-founder and CEO of Davos Premier, an agency that gets businesses, founders, and investors into the rooms they can't access on their own.Eight years ago, a crypto client asked Alexa if she could help host a dinner at the World Economic Forum. She didn't have a plan for it. She had a business partner in Switzerland who could open a few doors. They hosted one dinner, and people kept coming back for more. She never intended to build a company around it. The company built itself around her.Davos is a tiny ski village in the Swiss Alps where Fortune 500 CEOs, heads of state, and policymakers all end up in the same few streets at the same time. Alexa now runs a 2,500-person community and operates across WEF, Cannes Film Festival, Milken Summit, and Formula One, giving her clients visibility and access to the people who would otherwise be unreachable. She does it with her sister from opposite sides of the Atlantic. What sits underneath all of it is a simple belief that hasn't changed no matter how remote the world has become: the deals that matter still happen in person, in small rooms, between people who showed up. Watch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here [www.eccuity.com/podcasts] Learn more about Alexa here [https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexakarp/] Learn more about Alexa's company here [https://davospremier.com/] Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:39 Alexa 01:22 Beginnings 02:39 Foundations 04:03 Duration 05:45 Location 08:49 Success 10:24 Entry 11:10 Markets 13:43 NZ vs US 15:46 Suprises 16:20 Ai 17:38 Impact 19:46 B2B v B2C 20:06 Networking 21:11 Challenges 22:19 Outro #waystowealth #davos #wef #networking #entrepreneurship #cannesfilmfestival #access #startups #events #familybusiness #businessdevelopment #switzerland #dealmaking #wealthbuilding

Building an Empire from a Single Clinic, with Lorraine Miller

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Lorraine Miller, co-founder of Foot Mechanics, New Zealand's largest privately owned podiatry business, and co-founder of Whai Basketball in Tauranga.Lorraine and her husband John have spent 29 years building businesses side by side. Literally. They sit at desks next to each other. They are 50/50 partners in everything they own. At one point they were running a podiatry business, two Rodney Wayne hair salons, a Robert Harris cafe, and an 18-property portfolio all at once.Then the GFC hit, and they had to make a decision that most business owners hope they never face. They were highly leveraged. Cash stopped flowing. Three of their closest friends were in the same position. Within months, they were liquidating every property they had, some for less than they paid, to funnel everything into one asset: the podiatry business. They knew it was the engine that could pull them out. It did.What makes Lorraine's story different is that she never felt like she started at the same line as everyone else. Being Māori and female in New Zealand business, she has always felt like she had to run further just to stand in the same room. That honesty runs through the whole conversation.Watch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here [www.eccuity.com/podcasts]Learn more about Lorraine here [https://www.linkedin.com/in/podiatrynz/]Learn more about Lorraine's company 'Foot Mechanics Podiatry' here [https://footmechanicspodiatry.co.nz/]#waystowealth #footmechanics #whaibasketball #nzbusiness #entrepreneurship #gfc #property #couplepreneurs #māori #womeninbusiness #governance #tauranga #resilience #wealthbuilding

Why He Left America and Never Looked Back, with Marcus Nelson

This week on the Ways to Wealth Podcast, Charlie speaks to Marcus Nelson, co-founder of UserVoice, the feedback tab that sat on the side of Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft Xbox before most people knew what customer feedback software was. He sold the company last year and moved to New Zealand as a single father with his youngest son.Marcus raised $900,000 during the GFC when only five companies in all of Silicon Valley closed a round that quarter. Three weeks after the money hit the account, UserVoice was breakeven. He wishes he had never raised a cent. That one decision, and what it cost him, shaped how he thinks about capital, ownership, and what founders actually need versus what they're told they need.After two decades in Silicon Valley, he packed up and moved to New Zealand. What he found when he got here surprised him in ways he hadn't anticipated. Not the ocean or the lifestyle, those he expected. It was the things he had been trained to fear in America that simply didn't exist here. And it was the startup ecosystem he walked into, full of clever people building great things, almost entirely invisible to the networks and capital that could change their trajectory overnight.Watch every episode of the Ways to Wealth Podcast here [www.eccuity.com/podcasts]Learn more about Marcus here [https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusnelson/ ] Learn more about Marcus's company here [https://aiformainstreet.org/ ] #waystowealth #siliconvalley #uservoice #startup #venturecapital #entrepreneurship #nzbusiness #saas #ai #capitalraising #branding #immigration #bootstrapped #wealthbuilding