The long way round.

I grew up in New Zealand in a house where selling something was normal. My mother sold Tupperware, and she was brilliant at it, targets, relationships, persistence, turning up when it would have been easier not to.

I was selling things before I understood what selling was. It never felt like business. It felt like how you got what you wanted.

My early career was spent close to decision-makers: banking, investment banking, executive support, startups, hospitality and events. I was rarely the one making the call, which turned out to be the useful part.

I watched how businesses actually ran underneath the org chart, where the pressure sat, which relationships carried weight, and how quickly good structure or the lack of it showed up in the numbers.

Then I stopped watching. When I returned to New Zealand, my auntie and uncle were still working elsewhere while building their own limousine business, Lincoln Limousines. I stepped into the startup and effectively ran the day to day as General Manager: phones, bookings, sales, marketing, customers and general operations. One chauffeur organised the cars. My auntie remained the owner and handled wages and the high level financial side.

I did what was needed to get a family owned startup operating and growing. It taught me how to run a business from the inside, customers, sales, marketing, operations and people, without being the owner.

For more than a decade I built and operated a masonry and construction business with my husband. Contractors, quoting, scheduling, administration, cash flow, staff, compliance, growth, and the years where the market decided the outcome regardless of effort.

I made mistakes I now recognise instantly in other people's businesses. Most of them came from the same source: the owner being the system.

Five children, homeschooled alongside the business. Not a pause in the story, a large part of how I learned to lead, prioritise and hold responsibility without dropping it.

Family is the reason the work has to be worth something. It isn't the brand.

A deliberate move, a deliberate reset, and a decision to build the next chapter on purpose rather than by default.

Operating a business teaches you how value is produced. It doesn't automatically teach you how value is bought, structured or owned. That is the work I'm doing now, acquisitions, deal structure, valuation, negotiation and the psychology of owners deciding what happens next.

I'm learning it in rooms with people already doing it, and applying it as I go. I'm not claiming a track record I haven't built. I'm building one in public.

Acquiring. Investing. Partnering with owners. Building a portfolio that keeps creating value beyond the effort that started it, and writing down what I learn so it's useful to someone else.