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/

In this episode of Give It A Nudge, Steve sits down with Tom, co-founder and CMO of Lawpath. They talk about the reality of scaling a legal tech platform to over 600,000 small businesses. Tom shares a staggering statistic: up to 120,000 new companies are registered in Australia every single month. He explains exactly how Lawpath built a system to capture that massive audience.

Starting a business is hard. The standard three-year survival rate sits at a grim 51%. Most founders get completely crushed by the administrative burden of running a company. Tom explains why taking the legal and compliance work off their plates frees them up to actually build their products. This shift has pushed the survival rate of Lawpath users up to 65%. He also walks through their massive $10 million investment from Westpac, and why they doubled down on advertising during the COVID-19 lockdowns while their competitors froze.

We get into Tom's personal story, too. He traces his early career from Spritz—a startup that went through a wild $40 million acquisition by Yahoo7—to learning strict brand discipline at Tom Waterhouse. He opens up about the painful jump from being an individual contributor to a scale-up executive. He even admits that the sudden birth of his first child right before Black Friday finally forced him to stop micromanaging his team. Steve and Tom also trade stories about maintaining an 11-year co-founder relationship, and why loyalty always beats cheap pricing in the Australian market.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro: Surviving Spritz’s $40M Yahoo7 acquisition

05:47 – Learning strict brand discipline at Tom Waterhouse

08:31 – The origin of Lawpath: Fixing the headache of business setups

11:48 – Reaching 600,000 customers and the roadmap to 1 million

13:51 – How to secure a $10M strategic investment from Westpac

16:24 – Why 120,000 Aussies register new businesses every month

18:56 – Market quirks: Why Australian clients value loyalty over a cheap price

20:39 – The COVID pivot: Doubling ad spend while everyone else panicked

26:19 – Leadership realities: How a Black Friday baby cured his micromanaging

30:00 – Co-founder survival: 11 years together without imploding

37:01 – The 65% survival rate: Why automating the back-office keeps startups alive

Links:

Connect with Tom → https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomwillisweb/

Lawpath → https://lawpath.com.au/

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 Jacqui Clarke, ex-Deloitte Private Partner and author of Stop Worrying About Money, to talk about the single most important number 95% of people don't know: "What does it cost to open your front door?"

With the cost of living skyrocketing and "inheritance impatience" on the rise, financial stress is no longer just for those struggling to make ends meet. Jacqui explains why earning more money rarely solves a spending problem and why even high-net-worth individuals are terrified of their own bank accounts. She breaks down the "Toyota vs. Porsche" mindset trap and why smart women often find themselves financially vulnerable after a divorce.

Jacqui shares her background advising Australia’s wealthiest families and the brutal reality of the "ghosts" that come out of the woodwork when you leave a major firm. She also opens up about the "Orphan Club"—losing both parents in six months—and how it reshaped her view on legacy. Together, they prove that financial freedom isn't about how much you make, but about clarity, control, and honest conversations.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro: Steve’s 15-year history with Jacqui

02:00 – The "Orphan Club": Losing both parents in 6 months

08:00 – The secrecy of money & why families don't talk

12:15 – Divorce & financial literacy: Why smart women get stuck

17:45 – Leaving Deloitte: Bad leadership & the decision to jump

21:30 – The exit: Non-competes and the relief of walking away

24:40 – The "Ghosts": When former colleagues circle back

30:30 – The Big 4 Model: Why the "magic" is fading

36:00 – Writing a bestseller in 12 weeks (The 5am routine)

49:15 – The 95% Stat: Knowing the cost to open your front door

52:10 – The Toyota vs. Porsche mindset for young adults

56:30 – Longevity Risk: Can you afford to live to 100?

58:30 – Closing thoughts

LINKS

Connect with Jacqui → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquiclarke/

Stop Worrying about Money → https://www.jacquiclarke.me/stop-worrying-about-money

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 Jevon Le Roux (CEO) and Tahir Rauf (CTO), co-founders of Keeyu, to talk about the single most expensive question in e-commerce: "Where's my order?"

With 40% of all support tickets relating to delivery status and 56% of customers churning after just one bad post-purchase experience, the stakes have never been higher. Jevon and Tahir explain how they built a system to monitor 28 different failure points across fragmented software systems. This moves the industry from reactive resolution to proactive prevention.

The results? A massive 90% reduction in complaints and a 29% drop in workforce costs for their pilot customers.

Jevon shares his background in high-pressure retail ops where he saw teams spending half their day manually searching for orders. Tahir breaks down the technical challenge of connecting a "spaghetti stack" of legacy systems. Together, they are proving that while it takes 4 hours to fix a problem, it only takes 1 hour to prevent it.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 – Intro: The 56% Churn Stat & The Where’s My Order Nightmare
• 01:58 – Jevon & Tahir’s background: From Fintech & Retail to Founders
• 06:58 – The Problem: 28 failure points across 8 different systems
• 08:35 – How Keeyu Works: Moving from Reactive to Proactive
• 12:00 – The “4 Hours vs 1 Hour” Efficiency Rule
• 15:15 – It Can’t Be Done: Tackling the integration spaghetti
• 18:15 – The Pilot Results: 90% less complaints, 29% lower costs
• 21:00 – Raising Capital & The Plug-and-Play Architecture
• 34:00 – Steve’s horror story (and why manual support is dying)
• 38:15 – Services as Software: Redefining the industry standard
• 40:00 – The Founder Dynamic: Why Jevon said “I’m in” in one second
• 42:50 – Closing thoughts

Links:

Connect with Jevon → https://www.linkedin.com/in/jevonleroux/

Connect with Tahir → https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahirrauf/

Keeyu → https://www.keeyu.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 Crystal McGregor, General Manager at Tech Ready Women Academy, to talk about what it really takes to help more women start, grow, and fund businesses — and why the investment numbers still don’t reflect the performance data.

Crystal shares a career path that starts in local government in Central Queensland (building skateparks, pools, and community programs), then moves into entrepreneurship through an 18-year consulting business, and eventually into the startup world via a fashion-tech company where she raised funding (including a friends-and-family round) and learned, in her words, by “making every mistake possible.”

Now, she’s focused on scaling Tech Ready Women’s impact nationally after the business’s acquisition by Scolari, helping founders build traction, revenue, and confidence — without drowning in contradictory advice.

In this episode, we cover:

Crystal’s move from government to entrepreneurship — and why she “got sick of saying no.”

The youth entrepreneurship program that taught teens how to problem-solve (including twins who learned to read using audiobooks + physical books).

Raising a friends-and-family round ($100k) — how those conversations actually happen.

Why VC data says “invest in women” and the market still doesn’t follow it.

How AI is changing the game for non-technical founders.

Tech Ready Women’s three-step pathway: Ideation → Customers → Investment Readiness.

The “1 to 1000 customers” sprints — and founders making their first sales fast (e.g., $300 in 24 hours).

The worst advice founders hear: “Take every piece of advice.”

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro: Why this topic still isn’t shifting fast enough

00:52 – Crystal’s start in local government (sport & recreation)

03:20 – Leaving government + building an 18-year consulting business

04:30 – Youth entrepreneurship program: how it worked + the outcomes

08:52 – Fashion-tech startup: virtual try-on, grants, angels, and reality

10:33 – Friends-and-family round: how they raised $100k

11:25 – “We made every mistake possible” + lessons from the experience

13:00 – Tech Ready Women + the Scolari acquisition

15:10 – Has the environment changed for women founders?

16:14 – Why the VC model doesn’t match the data

17:18 – AI and the rise of the non-technical founder

22:14 – Program breakdown: Female Founders Startup Program

24:19 – “1 to 1000 customers” sprints + first sales momentum

26:38 – Investment Ready program (5 months) + capital options beyond VC

31:12 – Free resources, scholarships, and low-cost options

32:55 – Worst advice founders get: “Take every piece of advice”

33:23 – Closing thoughts

LINKS

Connect with Crystal → https://www.linkedin.com/in/crystal-mcgregor-86201068/

Tech Ready Women Academy → https://www.techreadywomen.academy/

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 finally sits down with Brendan Malone, Managing Director and Group CEO of Raiz Invest (ASX:RZI), after six years of trying to get him on the show!

Brendan takes us through his fascinating career journey, transitioning from a traditional background in investment banking (RBS) in London and Asia to owning a pub in Newcastle, and finally leading one of Australia’s most successful FinTechs.

They dive deep into the evolution of Raiz (formerly Acorns Australia), managing over $2 billion in funds, and the lessons learned from their expansion into (and withdrawal from) the Asian market. Brendan also discusses the power of "round-ups," the importance of financial literacy, and how Raiz is helping Aussies—and their kids—build wealth during tough economic times.

In this episode, we cover:

* Brendan’s shift from corporate banking to startup founder.

* The "sustainable growth" philosophy vs. burning cash.

* The mechanics of Raiz Rewards and reinvesting $10M+ back to users.

* Lessons learned from listing on the ASX and expanding into Indonesia & Malaysia.

* New features: From Bitcoin allocations to "Jars" for specific savings goals.

* How user behavior changes during market volatility (Brexit vs. Trump vs. Now).

Timestamps:

00:00 – Intro: Finally getting Brendan on the show

02:00 – Brendan’s Background: From Newcastle to Investment Banking in London/Asia

05:00 – The pivot: Owning a pub & discovering Acorns

06:00 – Launching Acorns Grow in 2016

09:00 – The strategy of sustainable growth

12:00 – Explaining the “Round-Up” technology

14:00 – Adding Bitcoin & custom portfolios

16:00 – Raiz Rewards: $10M reinvested into user accounts

17:00 – Rebranding to Raiz & Listing on the ASX

19:00 – The Asian Expansion: Challenges in Indonesia & Malaysia

24:00 – Branding consistency & App design

30:00 – The power of Dividends & Financial Literacy

32:00 – Raiz Kids & Intergenerational wealth

35:00 – Data insights: Raiz Jars & saving for haircuts

46:00 – How Raiz educates users through market volatility

49:00 – What’s next for Raiz?

LINKS

Connect with Brendan → https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanmalone/

Raiz Invest Australia → https://raizinvest.com.au/

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/