In this episode of Give It A Nudge, Steve sits down with Richard Stevens, the CEO of Zyft. With a rich background in scaling tech businesses, Richard is leading the charge in the ever-changing retail landscape, with AI coming in strong and shaping the way brands and shoppers interact.

We take a proper deep dive into Richard’s career, exploring his journey from falling into product management before it was even a recognized field to holding key leadership roles at prominent comparison sites like iSelect and LocalAgentFinder. He unpacks the challenging transition from a hands-on product builder to a CEO, explaining how he learned to let go of the day-to-day execution to focus on scaling a vision. Richard also shares how taking a five-month family road trip across Australia helped him reset before stepping into Zyft with a clear perspective.

The conversation centers on how Zyft is helping empower both consumers and retailers to make informed decisions, whether it’s purchasing smarter or promoting products more effectively. Richard explains the mechanics of Zyft’s browser extension and app, which act as a silent shopping assistant scanning over 140 million products across 50,000 Australian retailers. By completely removing the friction of manual comparison, he highlights how consumers feel empowered all year to find the best prices and save a few extra pennies.

Steve and Richard also discuss where Zyft is heading next and how the rapid pace of technological adoption is transforming the industry. They touch on how major retailers are using Zyft's predictive search data to navigate high-pressure sales events like Black Friday, and how platforms are dealing with global disruptors like Temu. Richard provides a glimpse into the future of automated, AI-driven personal shopping, explaining why maintaining a ruthless focus on genuine user value is the ultimate key to surviving retail disruption.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro and Richard’s journey from the Mornington Peninsula

01:17 - The elevator pitch for Zyft and its AI-based shopping tool

03:43 - The shift in consumer habits and shopping for value in-store vs. online

05:11 - A deep dive into Richard’s product management background and iSelect

09:23 - Transitioning from a product builder to a CEO and learning to let go

12:18 - Traveling Australia with family and resetting before joining Zyft

15:03 - How the Zyft extension and app seamlessly find the best deals

20:11 - The business model and working with over 1,000 retailers

23:39 - Using predictive consumer search data to forecast retail trends

25:11 - Navigating the Black Friday rush and cost-of-living pressures

30:27 - Dealing with global disruptors like Temu and exact product matching

35:42 - The future of AI shopping and automated digital personal shoppers

Links:

Connect with Richard Stevens → https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardfstevens/

Zyft → https://zyft.com/

Connect with Steve → https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevegrace/

The Nudge Group → https://thenudgegroup.com/

Give It A Nudge Podcast → https://www.youtube.com/@giveitanudge/

The Trouble With People → https://thetroublewithpeople.substack.com/

In this episode of Give It A Nudge, Steve sits down with David Kenney, the author of Epic Execution. With over three decades of hands-on experience, David has advised the who's who of Australian entrepreneurial fame, supporting tens of thousands of founders from early-stage ideas all the way to NASDAQ listings.

David's journey into the mechanics of business began at 18 when he hitchhiked across Sydney to interview CEOs and uncover exactly what drives growth. He spent 28 years as a chartered accounting partner and has refined his sharp pattern recognition through top accelerator programs like Startmate, UNSW Founders, and Tech Ready Women. He explains how his systematic thinking helped early tech startups commercialize their ideas before the ecosystem even really existed. Instead of just delivering standard accounting advice, David focuses on getting People, Product, Promotion, and Profit right.

We dive deep into his new book, Epic Execution. It is not a generic roadmap, but a complete Founder Operating System distilled into 24 pragmatic chapters. David spent a year crafting it as a series of tough questions founders need to ask themselves to test reality against their assumptions. He breaks down why pathological optimism can be a founder's biggest asset, but also their downfall if they let ego and the need for social media validation drive their decision-making.

Steve and David also trade thoughts on surviving the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, the massive shift in commercial real estate with 750,000 square meters of empty office space, and how the rise of AI is forcing companies to be more human-centric. David opens up about his personal operating system too, from mentoring youth startups to his non-negotiable 6:00 AM walks and freezing ocean swims at Shelly Beach.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro and the authenticity of unedited podcasts

01:54 - The 28-year accounting career and 30,000 founder meetings

05:03 - Commercializing university ideas in the early tech ecosystem

07:39 - Why pricing and capital allocation are the true foundations of scale

13:08 - Leaving a major partnership to drive deeper advisory impact

16:56 - Writing Epic Execution and forcing founders to ask hard questions

22:05 - The philosophy that great businesses are bought not sold

27:38 - Cash flow mistakes and the reality check loop for founders

31:18 - Navigating founder egos and the trap of social media perception

37:39 - Advising startups through the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic

46:00 - Empty office buildings and the new era of co-working spaces

50:38 - How AI is shifting knowledge work and the value of human connection

57:27 - Mentoring youth startups and morning swims at Shelly Beach

Links:

Connect with David Kenney → https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkenneyofficial/

Epic Execution → https://www.epicexecution.com/

Connect with Steve → https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevegrace/

The Nudge Group → https://thenudgegroup.com/

Give It A Nudge Podcast → https://www.youtube.com/@giveitanudge/

The Trouble With People → https://thetroublewithpeople.substack.com/

In this episode of Give It A Nudge, Steve sits down with Dr. Mariam Martin-Mnatsakanyan, the Founder and CEO of AirLabOne. They talk about the reality of digitizing physical assets for complex, high-risk industries like healthcare, mining, and space exploration.

Mariam explains exactly how her embedded technology takes existing legacy machinery and makes it intelligent and self-regulating. This autonomy is crucial for environments that are harsh or completely isolated, like microgravity, where human intervention just isn't possible.

Building deep-tech hardware is notoriously hard. Mariam spent over five years bootstrapping the business entirely on her own, without traditional funding. She explains why she deliberately ignored early investors who didn't understand her vision, choosing instead to follow her own structured path.

This resilience paid off when she secured a global patent for remotely accessing real and virtual scientific instrumentations, and later won major validation from tech giants at the Select USA Investor Summit. She also walks through her plans to expand into Southern California while waiting on a major grant that could see her technology manufactured in local clean rooms and sent into space.

We get into Mariam's personal story, too. She traces her early career as an analytical chemist and pharmacology researcher , from hunting for male contraceptive drugs at the University of Geneva to breast cancer drug discovery at the University of Sydney.

She opens up about the exact moment her own frustration with accessing lab equipment sparked the idea for her global collaborative platform. Steve and Mariam also trade thoughts on the loneliness of being a solo founder, the critical importance of industry validation over random advice, and why building new technology that pairs with old equipment is the ultimate sustainable business model.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro: From pharmacology researcher to deep-tech founder

02:50 – The origin of AirLabOne: Making legacy machinery intelligent

04:53 – Microgravity: Why space is the ultimate test for autonomous tech

08:06 – How the frustration of drug discovery sparked a global patent

13:03 – The lonely road: 5 years of bootstrapping without co-founders

16:24 – Ignoring the noise: Why you shouldn't take advice from outside your industry

19:00 – Winning validation at the Select USA Investor Summit

23:20 – The pivot to scaling: Expanding to California and raising capital

29:56 – Sustainability: Pairing cutting-edge AI with old infrastructure

34:11 – Manufacturing locally and the wait for a major space grant

Links:

Connect with Mariam → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariam-martin-mnatsakanyan-phd-4b0310104/

AirLabOne → https://airlabone.com/

Connect with Steve → https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevegrace/

The Nudge Group → https://thenudgegroup.com/

Give It A Nudge Podcast → https://www.youtube.com/@giveitanudge/

The Trouble With People → https://thetroublewithpeople.substack.com/