The Better SMB Podcast

Part of Better SMB's Election 2026 series — sitting down with each major party's small business spokesperson ahead of 7 November. Before two decades in the NZ Army and now Parliament, Dan Rosewarne struggled at school and found his path through vocational training. He walks David and Rob through Labour's Small Business Action Plan ("A Fair Go") and its follow-up, Small Business First — and what it...

With hosts David Altena & Rob Bull | Guest: Qiulae Wong, Leader, The Opportunity PartyNew Zealand has been unable to meaningfully lift productivity for 40+ years, despite inquiries, restructures and reforms. Qiulae Wong — leader of The Opportunity Party, with a career in sustainable and ethical business including the B Corp movement — joins David and Rob to test her party's policies against on...

With hosts David Altena & Rob Bull and special guest: Dr Paul Wood, author of Better Never Stops. Growth and improvement aren't the same thing. Some businesses get bigger and more complicated. Some hit their targets while quietly drifting from what made them great. Dr Paul Wood — psychologist, former SAS and Hurricanes performance consultant, and author of Better Never Stops — joins David and...

With hosts David Altena & Rob Bull | Guest: Elise Balsillie, Head of Thryv Australia & New ZealandThree-quarters of NZ business owners think their online presence is strong. Only about half their own customers agree. Elise Balsillie draws on Thryv's 2025 Business Index — 2,000+ SME decision-makers and customers across Australia and NZ — to unpack that gap, and what it now takes to get foun...

Smart people, sensible ideas, real effort — and yet the business isn't moving as fast as it should. David and Rob unpack why: it's rarely a strategy problem, a people problem, or a technology problem on its own. It's a connection problem — and it's quietly cancelling out good work in businesses everywhere. In this episode: The All Blacks analogy for misalignment: brilliant forwards, brilliant back...

Every three years, New Zealand business hits pause and waits for political clarity before it moves. David and Rob call time on that habit. In 2026, hesitation isn't caution — it's a competitive disadvantage, and the data on productivity, closures, and unemployment backs them up. In this episode: Why election years trigger a "wait and see" mindset — and why it's mostly noise, not strategy The uncom...

Has a government regulation, policy shift, or piece of legislation ever directly affected your business? Chances are it has. And chances are your response was a BBQ rant, a frustrated call to your accountant, or a LinkedIn post — but not a conversation with the people who actually made the decision. David and Rob sit down with Holly Bennett — lawyer, former political staffer, and founder of Awhi G...

Episode OverviewNew Zealand has around 530,000 SMEs — they employ 29% of the workforce and contribute over a quarter of GDP. Yet small business owners have long carried a regulatory and employment-law burden built, as the episode puts it, by people who've never signed a payroll or lost sleep over an employment dispute. In this episode, David and Rob sit down with Laura McClure MP — a former small...

Episode OverviewIf you had to sell your business tomorrow, what would it actually be worth to a buyer — without you in it? Every year over 50,000 NZ businesses close and only ~2,000 actually sell. Businesses that sell are built to run without the owner as the glue. Rod Cook spent over a year pulling himself out of the critical path of Jackson's Flooring Design Commercial to make that possible. Ori...

Episode SummaryHutch — founder of Plan AConsulting and former NZ Police detective — joins David Altena and Rob Bull to share what 15+ years of working with Kiwi SMEs has taught him. From running petrol stations to advising businesses across New Zealand, he unpacks thepatterns holding owners back and the practical steps to break free. Episode Highlights1. From the Police Force to Petrol StationsBur...

New Zealand earns $21 billion a year from dairy exports. Yet the performance gap between the best farms and the rest is enormous — and it has almost nothing to do with technology, weather, or market access. It's leadership. Tennielle Ellingham has spent 20 years inside this gap. Through Beyond the Gate, she works with farmers, vets, advisors, and rural business owners on the part of farm performan...

What does it take to build a high-performing business — and then hand it on to the next generation? David and Rob sit down with Jeff and Sasha Langham, the father-daughter team behind Drain Ninjas — a West Auckland drainage company and winner of the High Performance Award at the 2025 Northwest Country Business Association Business Awards. Drain Unblocking Auckland | Vacuum Loading | Drain Ninjas T...

It might be a bit late in posting, but David and Rob came back after the summer break to kick off 2026 with a look under the hood — reflecting on what's worked, what's ahead, and how you can help shape the conversation. With 31 episodes now in the wild and a growing audience, the highlights from the past year include some standout guests, a government minister on the show, a top-rated episode with...

Every construction project generates thousands of documents, drawings, decisions, and specifications. Then the project ends — and most of that intelligence disappears, buried on USB sticks or lost in SharePoint folders nobody revisits. In this episode, hosts David and Rob sit down with Jon Sinclair of Performance Building Technologies to explore why the construction industry's data problem is cost...

Most small and medium businesses think of governance as box‑ticking, compliance, or something only “big corporates” need. But what if governance was actually your competitive advantage? In this episode, we sit down with Dr Peter Crow, an internationally recognised governance advisor and director, to unpack what governance really means for SMBs — and why almost everything business owners think abou...

Innovation isn’t just about technology or government policy, it’s a leadership choice. In this episode of The Better SMB Podcast, we sit down with Sean Doherty, former Callaghan Innovation leader, to unpack why New Zealand’s prosperity depends on the decisions business leaders make today. Sean shares insights from decades in engineering, manufacturing, and national innovation programmes, challengi...

In this episode of The Better SMB Podcast, hosts Rob Bull and David Altena sit down with Ray Everest, educator, entrepreneur and co-founder of Future Focus, to explore what it takes to build a business that thrives without you. From humble beginnings in Tokoroa to leading six early learning centres in Papamoa, Ray shares his journey of scaling with purpose, removing ego from leadership, and creati...

In this episode of The Better SMB Podcast, we welcome Chris Parnell, Co-Founder and CEO of SetSeed, as both our guest and announce their official sponsorship of The Better SMB podcast. Chris shares his inspiring journey from Rotorua to building a global Customer Experience Platform that simplifies websites, CRMs, e-commerce, and email marketing for businesses worldwide. We dive into why SetSeed ch...

In this episode, we spend some time with Danielle Hancock, General Manager of the North West Country Business Association, to explore one of Aotearoa’s most connected, community-driven business regions. We talk about what makes the North West so unique, the generational businesses that continue to thrive, and the deep sense of collaboration that sets this region apart. We also unpack the partnersh...

In this episode, Rob and David sit down with Patrick McKibbin, Chief Executive of the Hutt Valley Chamber of Commerce, to explore how one region is redefining what local business leadership can look like. Patrick shares how the Chamber has evolved from being a traditional networking body into a hub for innovation, collaboration and advocacy, supporting a $10 billion economy with the ambition to gr...

In this episode of The Better SMB, Rob Bull and David Altena go behind their NZ Manufacturer article “Leadership from the Top: How Government Must Reflect What It Asks of Business.” They explore what genuine leadership across the system looks like, from the Beehive to the boardroom, and why consistency, accountability and execution matter more than ever. Building on their conversation with Ministe...

In this episode of The Better SMB Podcast, we sit down with Katia Holland , Associate at McCaw Lewis, to explore how Māori worldviews and tikanga reshape how businesses in Aotearoa think about success. We unpack what it means to prioritise intergenerational responsibility over short-term wins, and how principles like whakapapa, manaakitanga, and kaitiakitanga can be applied to strategy, governance...

In this episode of The Better SMB Podcast, sponsored by SetSeed , David and Rob reflect on their recent interview with Dave Bunting of Architectural Glass Products (AGP) and connect it to a recent NZ Manufacturer column: Expect to Win: Raising the Bar and Aiming at Excellence  They explore how AGP became one of New Zealand’s most operationally excellent manufacturers, and, more importantly, how an...

In this episode, David and Rob dive back into the world of economic reports and ask a tough question: who are they really for? They take some time to revisit one of the first and most popular topics, they ever covered on the show and explore what’s changed over the past 12 months. The discussion covers:  Why reports from Stats NZ, MBIE, and MFAT fail to provide practical value for SMBs  How produc...

In this episode, we dive deep into the role of leadership from the top, exploring how government can model performance and create the conditions for business to thrive. Our guest, Hon Chris Penk (Minister for Small Business, Manufacturing, Building & Construction, and more), shares his perspectives on aligning public and private efforts to lift New Zealand’s productivity. We discuss:  Why lead...