Is Social Media Harming Your Kids? What Every Parent Needs to Know with Cecilia Robinson

Today's special guest is Cecilia Robinson. She's the founder of MyFoodBag, Tend Health Aupair Link. And we also got chatting about befor16, which she's right behind in driving to try and get the social media band for people under the age of 16 here in New Zealand. So you're in for a fascinating conversation with one of New Zealand's leading entrepreneurs, Cecilia. A huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Pleasure to have you here. I've been wanting to chat to you for a wee while now on numerous fronts. You know, myfoodbag, I was obviously a customer for a long time. Au pairlink, Tend. So all the side of what you do as an entrepreneur, the one thing that got me most excited was what you're doing with before 16.

Thank you.

So what is it that keeps you up at night right now?

Yeah, look, I really worry about the mental health crisis that we're seeing in our young people and the anxiety that we've seen rise over the last, you know, 10, 12 years, not just across New Zealand, but globally. And I think for me, as a mother of three, and in particular, I've got a 13 year old, so it's top of mind for me. I'm really seeing the impact of what that smartphone generation is experiencing and what the social media generation is experiencing, and it's flowing into every aspect of, you know, our life, of our economy, of our country. So look, that's really problematic and that's probably what keeps me up at night.

Fair enough. And me too. So I worked at a private school in Christchurch for a long time and there's a number of suicide at the school. No different to many other schools that have similar issues around New Zealand. But I got quite curious, I was like, why is this happening? What's driving this? And so I started talking with John Key around what he'd seen were the drivers. And this was probably eight or nine years ago. And for him, he said the research that they got was it was social media, bullying, drugs and sexual abuse in the home. I said, okay, this is alarming. So then I went to Dr. Warren Farrell. So he wrote a book called the Boy Crisis. So he consults to the White House and has done for a long time on boys and men's health. And obviously when it comes to suicide, from puberty onwards, boys are six times more likely to do that. So I was like, what's driving it? He said, well, I disagree with your former Prime Minister. He says those are secondary factors. He's like the primary and only factor that we come up with that shows correlation is that lack of a present male role model. That's the number one driver. He says, beneath that become these other things. And so people are searching, using the drugs and using social media. So that was fascinating for me and it got me on this track to. So a friend of mine wrote a book, Johann Hari is his name, and it's called Stolen Focus. Mind blowing. Have you read it?

I have, yeah.

What did you think of that?

Fantastic.

He nails it with his research, right?

Totally. I mean, it's just an extraordinary ride.

And that was just before maybe two, three years before Jonathan brought out anxious generation.

Totally.

So I was like, yes, these are my people. And then you guys came on the scene. I was like, oh, yes, New Zealand does need this. So Mr. Luxon, whether people love him or loathe him, I'm like, high five, dude. Well done on banning phones.

Absolutely.

Why do we need them?

It's a phenomenal. And actually what we're seeing now, I've actually just written an article about it that's going into the Herald about the actual results from that as well. Because what we're really seeing has been a significant shift, you know, in terms of almost every metric that you can look at in the schools that have successfully implemented the phone bans. And so, you know, they're seeing, you know, performance improving, bullying drop, you know, mental health improving. All of the kind of key metrics that you look for when doing an intervention are showing and showing really, really strong results. And so, you know, it is real, this is a problem and it needs to be addressed. And, you know, I think the first step, which was phenomenal, was implementing the policy to have the phone free school day. But we just need to think about how that get extended and how we make sure that, you know, we protect the mind of our young people. Right. 3%.

I'm with you on this. And I think there is a lot of parental responsibility required here.

Absolutely. Yeah, there absolutely, certainly is. And I think what was really interesting about the research that they did about the smartphone free school day was that actually the biggest problem that the schools are facing with children not complying with the rules is parents contacting their children during the day. And so, like, that is the number one reason why people are actually why children are using their phones still at school. Because parents are anxious and want to get in contact with them. They want to remind them of something.

Which is nice and thoughtful, but actually it's a problem?

Well, actually it really genuinely is. And you know, I can textualise it by thinking last week my son's school was, and this is probably on the extreme side of it, but you know, we saw a headline in the Herald that, you know, there was a large private school that was on fire last week. And you know, we waited for communication from the school. I didn't call him go, hey, are you okay? I just waited for the school to communicate with us because I don't think it's helpful for us as a parent to intervene because surely the school have got procedures and policies that they want their children to follow and parents intervening is not helpful to that. And so we actually need to be really clear about what we're doing, whether it's helpful or hurtful to development of our children. And you know, of course my son rocked home at the end of the day and he shrugged his shoulder and it wasn't a big deal, mum. Actually the biggest problem was actually the headline in the Herald. Cause it actually made everybody, you know, really upset about it. And so you just really. And you also need to foster independence with your children. And I think that's something that's really underrated in today's kind of world, you know, and how do you, how do you foster independence? Right. And so those are the types of things that I consider both as a parent and how more broadly we participate as a society.

Right, I'm with you, Jonathan. One of his books previously was the Coddling of the American Mind. I love that. And we, I can see it even in myself at times, coddling. I've got a nine year old boy.

Yeah.

It's like actually just let him walk down the shots.

Totally.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. It's actually really interesting. So I, because I've got kids on kind of the different ends of the spectrum, like I've got a teenager and I've got a toddler effectively or just coming out of toddlerhood. One of the things that I really noticed a significant change in the last 10 years as a parent has been, you know, I used to take my biggest kid to, you know, like what was called Little Kickers at the time. And you know, the parents were made to sit down, we were made to like the kids were meant to listen to the coaches who were running the sessions to today when I take my 4 year old and all of the parents are in the middle of the session like kids scoring goals because a parent that was just dealing with their kid is kind of shielding the gold and the children are not being taught to kind of listen to that other person. They're expecting to listen to their parent only. And I think that's problematic. Right? It was problematic to the degree that we actually pulled our child out of that class and actually put them into a higher age group where we expected it to be a different experience. Because yeah, it is a totally different experience as the kids get older. But for me, I'm just like, I want my children to be respectful and independent and listening to other adults in the community that are trusted. Right. And it can't just be me. Right. It's not just one person. So we have to think about how we're evolving, you know, and how that's impacting our children's minds and their well being long term as well.

I agree with you. It's really interesting. I went to the Little Kickers with Finn as well and the same thing, there was 12 parents out there doing this and holding them. I'm like, goodness me. So we lasted a term and they were like, we're done.

Yeah, totally. And it's actually really. I actually, my brother in law was a principal at school and a teacher for a long period of time and I brought him to one of the sessions and I said to him, you know, do you think we're kind of bad parents because we're sitting on the sidelines watching? And he's like, no. It's actually a really. You're doing a good job because you actually as a parent then feel guilty cause you're not participating with your child and your child is going, oh mum, why are you not shooting the ball with me? And I'm like, no, because I want you to listen to your coach. Your coach is telling you what to do and I shouldn't be intervening. And so it's actually, it's a difficult predicament. I see it across a broad range and I think it's kind of the tip of the iceberg of what's kind of indicative of what's happening. And you know, I think about my son who's 13 now and you know, when I was from 9 8, 9 in Sweden, you know, I'd be trusted to walk to school by myself, to bring my bike to go horseback riding. But like we're limiting the world that they're living in, but we're increasing their social experience online. Right, brilliant.

So this is something that Jonathan talks about.

Totally.

We overprotect our kids in the real world.

Absolutely.

Under protect them on the online world.

Absolutely.

And I can see that that's real kids I know that are 6 and 7 that have full access on an iPad to Google, to YouTube. And I'm like, absolutely, that's toxic. So my little boy does have an iPad. He gets to use it when we travel overseas. So maybe once or twice a year he gets to use it on the plan for half an hour supervised each day on the holiday lockdown. Yeah, yeah, totally. No YouTube, no YouTube kids, totally. And very specific apps you can play with. No Roblox, none of that crap.

Yeah, totally.

But I think that that's probably not the norm.

It's not. And look what's interesting is when their children start school and even with our four and a half year old, there's something called reading eggs and reading eggs because he's really interested in learning, right? And what we do is we sit with him, he does, we do guided access, he can do his learning and he's learning the Alphabet and reading and stuff. And that's a very different experience from giving a here go for gold, you know, like go and just do whatever you want. And the other thing that I see that I find quite worrying is again this sentiment around because of my 13 year old will go to Saturday sports and then on the sidelines I watch all of the siblings sitting on phones or their parents devices most frequently, sometimes their own devices, iPads, et cetera, on the sports lines, you know, watching whatever it is rather than following the game or supporting their sibling. And I think it's a really sad indictment, right? Like we just gotta stop that. Like our kids are just made to sit down and just watch and you just, you know, you cheer for your brother actually. And then he comes and cheers for you, right?

You're Cole. Probably old school now.

Totally, totally old school, right. As a parent because like we never give our child advice. Like our kids never would never go to a restaurant and bring a phone or advice and they would never expect it. Like I carry like this small little box of magnetiles in my purse everywhere and then four cars and my little boy, my four year old just sits up and he just does that while we're having. But it's unusual and it's not about perfect parenting, but it's trying to do your best within the environment that you're in and supporting your children to be creative and curious and robust and all those things. Right.

I love that. It's so interesting. So like I see my role as dad and of course my partner and Finn's biological mum as well, like us as a trio, our role is to help him become independent of us as quickly as possible. Making his bed, his lunch, you know, conversing with people of all ages and stages. To me that's success. And I want him to leave home. I don't want him to be at 35, living at home and gaming is, you know, that to me is, I failed. He didn't launch totally. I want him to launch soon.

I totally agree. I think there's real steps that we can put in place to support our children, to get there. And it is the simple things. And it was funny because my 4 year old, my husband was away for a couple of weeks, which he never normally is, and he'd taken our big kid and then I'd had a babysitter come in temporarily. And our four year old really gave that babysitter grief. Right. And so recently when I had to go out, my husband had to go out for something. I said to my 13 year old, I said, look, you're in charge. Like, yes, we've got someone here babysitting, but you're actually in charge of your little brother. You're brushing his teeth, you're making him sure, he's eating, you're putting him to bed because you're the person that's most used to him. And because, you know, someone that's not, not comfortable with, you know, Charlie or Charlie's uncomfortable with them, it's much harder for him. And of course my 13 year old thrives. Right. Because it's given the responsibility. I trust you to help me with your siblings. Yes, there's another adult in the house, but you're the right person to go to. And he's really thriving off that and it's really lifting him. So it's about how you extend them and how you make them feel as if, you know, they're really important because they are. But not just because we're protecting them, but because they're also adding value themselves. Right.

It makes total sense.

Yeah.

For you, what does successful parenting look like for your own family?

Yeah, I think, look, I've read lots of parenting books over the years and I think one of the acronyms that stuck with me was trick, which is Trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness. Right.

That's Esther Wojcicki. How do you raise success?

She's amazing.

She's phenomenal.

She's amazing. Amazing. You know, and like, I think her husband, like he went on to, you know, he also had an amazing career. She's just phenomenal family. And she's just, we've really Implemented that. And I read that book and I feel like that was maybe five years ago. I read her book and I had a light switch go on. And one of the key outtakes for me in that phase was independence with our kids and teaching them how to be independent from us. And that's what we're talking about, right? And so, like, for example, our kids, we send them to surf camp each year. They'll go up north, they go to Mangawhai, that's five days away, or actually six days, five nights. And we sent our son at nine and he knew nobody. And it was this game, it was actually just after I read that sitter, it was about five years ago. And then our daughter went for the first time this past year. She was only eight and a half, so she was one of the youngest kids to go. Right. And it's just lifted them, like they came back from that experience and they were more resilient, had dealt with problems, didn't have mum and dad. Like, my daughter didn't find her pajamas, despite the fact that I'd labelled everything in her bag and put it in for her. Right. And so she slept in a T shirt for like four. And it's awesome. Like, how good is that experience for her to learn? And then she said to me, she said, oh. And on the last day I found it, of course, Mum, and then I wore it like. But it's actually really good because if you're standing over them every day asking them to brush their teeth and put their deodorant on and go for the motions and eat their dinner, they're not taking responsibility, they're just relying on you. And so you have to build a culture in your family where actually they're also relying on themselves and other people around them. Whether that's a sibling, like we're doing with Tom and Charlie, where Tom is supporting Charlie, if we're not at home or, you know, just how do you lift them up? Right.

This is traditional parenting. Like, when you think about it, in Ireland we had large families, 9, 10, 11 siblings, and the older siblings care for the younger siblings totally 100%. That's how you learn to care for others.

Absolutely. And it's just, it's some of the basic mechanics of things. Like if it was legal, I would. Would be totally comfortable to leave my 13 year old at home with my 4 year old. And as soon as he turns 14, that's the next thing on the cards, Right. Because it lifts him up, it builds him. He's such a, you know, like, it builds his accountability and also from a sibling relationship point of view, but we've lost some of that, and we totally are overprotecting. And so it's about how we can stretch our children. And so, you know, we go to Waheke every summer. And over the last three or four years, maybe three years, my son has got a group of friends. They're allowed to take the bus by themselves, go into Honora, sort themselves out for lunch. You know, he has to earn money so that he's got enough money for over summer.

Does he have chores?

Yeah, well, we don't normally pay the kids. We definitely don't pay for chores that you're part of this family. But for big items, you know, that need to be done around the house, yes, we may pay for that. And in particular, now that my son's going on Christmas leave early, he'll have a couple of weeks where he'll be working and doing real kind of grunty work at home, which we will pay for. But also, like, how do you find ways of adding value? So one of the things that we're currently doing with them is our old toys, for example, is a good example. And so we've done a big clean out. And Thomas is gonna sell toys on Trade Me, but they're his siblings toys, in particular his sisters. And so he has to negotiate with her about what the value's gonna be, what are they gonna post it for, and how are they gonna split the process.

I love that.

That's great because it's her toys, so she should get something out of it. But it's his process and so all of those things. So he has to find ways of how does he get creative and make his own money. So, yeah, lots of things. To be able to kind of build that independence and collaboration between the.

That's brilliant. I think we need to see more of that at school as well. Like this idea of being an entrepreneur, thinking like an entrepreneur. We're not seeing nearly enough of that in schools. And I love a lot of the things that Finn does at school. He goes to a great little school, but there's a component where I'm like, I want Finn to learn about what it is to build a business. And so this term, they've learned about marketing. They were skilled up on Canva. They had to come up with a business idea. They had to do market research.

That's amazing.

He's in year four, and I'm like, this is awesome. So I want to see more of that. And it sounds like you're doing that at home?

Yeah, totally. And look, not all schools are doing that. I think for a year, four kids, that school is progressive. Right. And so, in fact, my son was saying, we were having a conversation. Cause we always do dinner times together as a family. It's kind of sacred, sitting around the table.

No tv.

Yeah, totally. Absolutely no. No devices. We've never had anything like that. It's never been a problem. And so I think if you start in that environment, then you never would even think that you'd have it on. Right. And he was talking about when he was at primary school, how one of his most enjoyable tasks was when his teachers had given him a budget and said, this is your budget now, go and plan a European holiday and then come and pitch it back to your class. Right. And my daughter's doing something similar this year, which has been like developing an ice cream flavour and they've gone to Embry to see how milk was produced and all these things. Right. And so it's early entrepreneurship, early thinking and like, I love that. Right. And so it's tangible because a lot of the things I think often we're teaching our kids maybe isn't as tangible. But what I am pleased about is, you know, the basics it's been implementing, like reading, writing, maths, like we navigated quite far away from that as a country for a long period of time. And so I've been really pleased to see that reintroduced again in schools and for our family personally, we've seen a significant academic lift in our, in particular in our nine year old because they are now being more disciplined about the curriculum and how it's being executed. So. Yeah. And then from that, obviously entrepreneurship and so many other opportunities as well presents themselves. Right.

100%. And I want to come back to before 16 in a moment, but we're talking about entrepreneurship. You are the who's who of being an entrepreneur in this part of the world. And I know you probably don't like me saying that.

No, I really don't. Yeah, thank you.

But, you know, we think about it. So. Aupairlink, myfoodbike and now tend big players. So how does your brain think? What informs your way of looking at a problem? Do you go looking for problems, do you strategize and find, oh, I can see, I can do something there, or does it organically happen in your life? And you go, I need to sit and figure this out?

Yeah, I think it's a really good question. I think for me an idea is like 1% and execution is 99%. And I remember back in my food bag, like I did a conference on the Gold coast once where I was speaking and I had a guy come up to me afterwards and kind of knock me on the shoulder and he was like, you know, I had the idea for my food bag first and I was like, cool, but what did you do with it? Like, what happened? Right. And so it's in that execution. And I think that comes from curiosity sometimes it comes from naivety. Like I think I am clearly innately action orientated. So if I see a problem, I like to go and explore it. And you know, that's been the origin of all of our businesses that we've had, right? It's been a problem. How do we come up with a solution? You know, au pairlink was because I'd been an au pair in the us, but I'd actually wanted to be an au pair in New Zealand. And at the time I couldn't actually find a good placement in New Zealand. So I went to the US instead from Sweden. And then when I did come to New Zealand and I actually looked into it further here, I saw that there was a market opportunity and I kind of dabbled in it. And then that OPLN came from that, right? And then in my food bag, similarly, I've got a husband who loves to eat, kind of hates to cook. We'd have this discussion every day at the end of the day, like, you know, what do you want to have for dinner tonight, darling? Well, whatever's easy. Worst answer that you could ever give someone, right? And so that's how we ended up, you know, we'd seen the concept for my food bag and you know, and started from there, right? And in 10, we'd had lots of difficult healthcare experiences. We'd had a stillborn daughter, we'd had another late miscarriage and so. So we'd gone through this really difficult in our healthcare experience and just couldn't understand why the healthcare system is so disjointed in the times that we live in. Like it really shouldn't be as complicated as it is. And so it's all kind of come from problems and then trying to figure out the solutions. And that's where it's all started and originated from. Incredible.

Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing about your loss. I'm really sorry that you've experienced that. My former wife Lisa and I went through prior to Finn and had miscarriage and I'd never thought about it prior to that happening. It Never really crossed my mind. And I think it's almost this thing that a lot of people, particularly women, just navigate quite silently. And there's almost like. I don't know if the word shame is the right thing around it, but there's this kind of. I find it difficult. I was like for months, emotionally, I couldn't operate very well at all. How did you navigate that?

Well, look, it was challenging, I think for us. We'd had before we'd had Tom, we'd had repeated miscarriages, early stage miscarriages though. And then we had Tom successfully. And then I fell pregnant and we had our stillborn baby, which was devastating at the time. And then I think the biggest disconnect for me and kind of the origin Part of 10 was that we were just told that lightning doesn't strike twice, just go for it again. And then we had another late pregnancy loss at 17 weeks. And so that made me really, I think it made me more action orientated to kind of try to understand what the origin of not just my issue was, but also why the health system wasn't better equipped to deal with someone like me. And of course, we were really fortunate because we went on to have Layla and Charlie. And so those, you know, those experience that you have shape you. And I think for me, you know, I rely really heavily on my husband. Like, we're really a team and personal in our personal life and in our work life. We work together, you know, we do life together. And so, you know, we lean on each other. But, you know, it's challenging. And I think in particular for us, you know, we were really lucky. Cause we already had Tom when we went through this. But, you know, Tom obviously knew that he was gonna have a baby sister. Twice he knew he was gonna have a baby sister. Cause it was both girls that we lost. And you know, the minds of children are so beautiful because, you know, when we came home actually after we lost the second baby and I said to him, look, I'm really sorry, th, you know, you know, we've lost the baby. And he just took my hand and he said, oh, that's okay, mum. We'll find her again, you know, gorgeous. And you just, you know, you're just like, just beautiful, right? And it helps your healing, you know. And so, yeah, you go for those stages. And you know, I think that mindset is everything, you know, and I think it's, you know, it's hard to choose to be positive and to be resilient. But, you know, I often think that you do have a choice about how you think about things and the things that you're fortunate about. You know, my husband always says, you know, success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you have. And he'd keep reminding me of, like, whether it was just the two of us, he would still be happy. Whether it was just the three of us. With Tom, we would still be happy. Like, it wouldn't, you know, and so. And today, like, that's how we think about things as well. I mean, extraordinarily lucky to have the children that we have. But, you know, happiness is wanting what you have day to day. Right. So, yeah, absolutely.

And you can control that.

Totally.

It's nobody else's.

Yeah, totally. Like, I think if you're constantly striving, I think that's where the Instagram generation comes from, where people are constantly comparing themselves. I heard Jonathan, I hate say on the One Young Mind podcast, you know, that people are. It's like an ongoing performance review. Right. People are constantly on social media benchmarking themselves against other people. How do I get richer, more beautiful, you know, better accomplished, like, better at my sport, Whatever it is. If you're constantly feeling that you're competing with the world around you, you're never gonna feel like you're winning 100%. Like, how do you ever feel satisfied? How do you ever feel that innate sense of just happiness? Right. And so, you know, I think that's a really important challenge is being happy in the day. To day.

Yeah. And choosing to be.

Yes, totally.

Thank you for sharing that. And I think entrepreneurship, certainly the ones I've worked with over the years, often when they have difficult things come up in their life, they will double down on their business and their work and their gym workouts to avoid dealing with the challenge. But it sounds like you've got tools and processes to go. When stuff hits the fan, we're going to slow down, we're going to feel the pain, we're going to acknowledge it, but we're not going to sit in it forever.

Yeah. And look, I mean, I think when we lost our first battle that was stolen, it was actually in Australia and we were in the middle of, you know, launching my food bag in Australia. We were in the middle of actually selling oplink in New Zealand. We still ran OPL Inc. And owned it. And we still ran my food bag as CEOs in New Zealand. And so it was a busy period. And obviously still we had a 20 month old child and we had no family support in Australia. And so it was just us and our remains of nopia at the time. And so I think that for me, I also just knew that I just didn't have much of a choice other than to get up, brush myself off. And you know, while it really hurt, you know, it helps for me to get back into routine and get into the day to day of dealing and tackling with the problems. And you know, when it happened the second time, you know, we, you know, obviously it was really challenging. It was challenging going and seeing our team. But also there was this like, you know, I know that my personal health feels best when I'm doing the things that I love and surrounded by the people who give me strength. And part of that, a big part of that is work. Right. And so it is showing up and going like, you know, I'm okay, and I want to focus on the priorities that we have inside this business because, you know, you know, just stopping everything and that probably doesn't help me as a person. Right.

And that's really good self awareness. And I feel that where your focus goes, your energy flows. So if you're focusing on the negative or you're constantly sitting in an emotion that doesn't serve you totally, it's going on in circles.

Yeah. And, you know, I think that it's, you know, and I really understand because, you know, I went through the phase of, like, you know, every person around me was pregnant and we couldn't get pregnant, or every person around me was pregnant and then we'd miscarried or, you know, like, and you're feeling that, like you're seeing all of this world around you that you feel disconnected from because of what, what you're personally going through. But, you know, and it can be really hard to be happy for other people in those moments. But you can choose to be. Cause like, I often I think about the fact that, you know, you don't want someone else to experience what you're going through. Right. And so, you know, you choose be happy for your friends that don't have that same problem. And then, you know, I kind of always believe, like it comes back to you, like that positivity, it comes back. And so that's how I think about it.

I love it. Thank you for sharing that. It's interesting. I love how you think and it's interesting. So I used to be a drummer and so, so I feel like when you think and speak, you're at a tempo, you're at a higher frequency, higher tempo, you're different than others. I can sense it And I think that when we see multiple serial entrepreneurs, they think differently, at a different tempo, a different frequency. Sitting in Cape Town about four or five months ago with my friend Robin Sharma. So he's wrote a book called Many Books, but one's called 5am Club. And we're talking about Mindset and we're talking about entrepreneurs. And he says, james, let's look at what you're doing. So he gets this Journal of Minority Start. He says, you could cut half of that. He says, why don't you just. And he circles. Why don't you just focus on that? Yeah, do one thing and do it really well.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, you're right. So it sounds like you've mastered that. It's like, let's pick one thing and let's double down on it. So you've done that with my foodbag.

Clearly.

Au pairlink Tend. So how long are we into tend? When did you do this?

About five years.

Great. And what's the mission? What's success look like for tend?

So for Tend, our purpose is to help New Zealanders be the healthiest people in the world. And sometimes I go into kind of groups and we've got a big purpose. Purpose deck that we present on. And, you know, it's there, it's in the centre of everything and, you know, people's eyes glaze over or the eye roll, which is my favourite, because it's like. It's actually not that hard. Like, this is not. I mean, yes, there's complicated issues, but we're a country where 5 million people live. You know, we're an island. We actually overall fund health well as a country and have for many years. Whether or not that spend is well distributed, it's completely different. Separate issue. Right. But. But overall, we've got all these attributes as a country and I genuinely believe, you know, why, you know, do you live longer if you live in Australia vs New Zealand? Why is there a gap between PKEH and mori? And how do we work on actually bridging that gap? And so it's actually a really interesting intellectual challenge and the purpose for us is to achieve that. Right. So that's the purpose of tend. You know, we're New Zealand's third largest primary healthcare provider now. We've got about 500 staff, 24 clinics, and so it's been a busy five years. Right. It's incredible, though, but it's. We're starting to see our purpose that we've had for this entire time linking into our. And that's What I'm really interested in is how we're turning those dynamics around and so how we're enrolling people in primary care providers or in our infrastructure who previously haven't had an engagement with primary care. Right. How are we accessing a population that previously weren't being seen and weren't getting access to healthcare? And that's really interesting.

So, yeah, that's phenomenal. And I see that also being scalable outside of New Zealand because there's many other. Australia probably has its challenges too. America, Canada, where the. There's a big disparity between generally white populations and aboriginal or first nations populations.

Yeah. And health is interesting though, because it was very unique to each area. And like, one of the things that, you know, there's lots of global businesses that come out of New Zealand and do exceptionally well. Right. Because the problem for New Zealand is that we've got a really short Runway. And so like, you know, our plane doesn't have much taxi space. Cause we're only 5 million. Right. And so the trick is if you're in an industry that you can make it broad. Right. And so you want to have broad industries if you want to be primarily operating out of New Zealand, which is our desired objective. And that kind of comes back to a little bit of our business purpose as well. Because, you know, when I look at business, I look at kind of three key criterias in terms of how I make decisions around the opportunities that we pursue. And so my first rule and my first personal purpose for our business side of things is like, I need to work alongside people that I kind of trust, learn from, admire, respect, you know. Second thing is I have to do something that's got real meaning and purpose. Like, I'm not going to be selling toilet paper. Yep, we all need toilet paper every day. But it doesn't like set my world on fire. And three, three. It's for the country that I love and that's New Zealand. And so, you know, I don't necessarily have this big global motivation to go like internationally because we can make a lot of good here as our foundation. And I'm really motivated by that. And I think that if we can look and fast forward 20, 30 years from now, you know, and we can actually see that acceleration and change in our healthcare outcomes, that would be one of the greatest joys of my life outside of my family. Right.

I can't wait to get you back on here and just celebrate that with you because I know it's gonna happen. Sense of conviction in the way you talk about it and the vision is radically clear to me. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm a big fanatic about understanding my own health, my family's health. So I worked with this guy in the US and he was essentially a scientist. And the US Defense Force hired him to work with the Navy seals on identifying metrics around preventing future ill health. So I did a massive program with him on my health, and we did all these stats and metrics. During that process, I found a lump in my pec and went to local doctor and they were, oh, don't worry about it, it's all good. And he was like, james, that's no, we're gonna look at why there's a lump there that doesn't seem normal. He says, do this, do this, do this, do this blood test. And my GP said, no, no, no, no. I'll send you for these four, like total blood count, all the basics. But I'm not sending you for the rest. The hospital will look at me like I'm an idiot. I said, I don't care. I said, I want to go and do it. Well, you can't. So I went to the blood bank and I. And self referring did cost a lot, about 1200 bucks. But then it came back and it says, well, you've got high prolactin, you've got high IGF1. So all these stress hormones. Interesting. He says, james, this is interesting that this could be connected. So he says, you need to go get a full body mri. We need to look for the pituitary because it could be a prolactinoma. There could be breast cancer. You've got it in your family. Okay, so go back to my doctor. I want a full body mri. No, you're not doing that. That's not possible in New Zealand. I said, what do you mean it's not possible? I'm happy to pay for it. Private health. And if that doesn't cover it, I'll just pay for it. It's my health. I'm fortunate to be able to do that. Well, no, I had to fly to la.

Did you do the prnu?

I did do the prnuvo.

Yeah, me too.

Did you? Yeah, I was a bit anxious, but when I was getting ready for it. How did you find it?

Amazing.

Me too.

Yeah, I find it really interesting. I mean, I think that's. It's a control thing, right. As well, to be able to track and control. And I think, I think that it's, you know, when I think about healthcare, like for us In New Zealand, we want to build a first class cabin that everybody can live in and we want to deliver those health outcomes. And you have to ask the question, why is the GP not referring? And often that's because there are disincentives, you know, in the system to do that. And also because most commonly it's because, you know, people don't necessarily need the treatment and so, you know, they worry about, you know, over, you know, overloading a system, but there also has to be an ability for people to access a health care that they need and that they feel is important to them. Right, yes. And. And there's a disconnect here for that. And there's something similar in Sweden. They're doing the NICO scan, which actually Daniel Ek, who founded Spotify as an investor in. It's a really cool, a really, really cool kind of similar to PR experience that's on my list for next time I'm in Sweden. You should check. It's called nico. N E K O N Ecohealth.

I'll put a wee link in the show notes as well.

Yeah, go and have a look at it. And I think they actually now have a clinic as well in the uk. And so, yeah, really interesting. Like proactive health. And it's one of the things that we're doing at Tender. We're actually doing practive health medicals. But again, it's something that can be quite challenging to kind of have a conversation around in an environment where that's kind of disincentivised. So. Yeah, good for you though. Bruno Voskam was good.

Amazing. And it said, James, you've got gynecomastia here, which is not breast. Breast cancer. It's stress related. You just need to manage your stress better. So you need to do more meditation, more breath work. You need to be not doing as many keynotes and just slow down a bit less time in the air.

Yeah, totally.

So that was helpful. What about for yourself?

Yeah, it looks similar. And you know, I think what was really interesting and I actually random, but both my husband and I did the scans and when to kind of cut a long story short, but one of the things, when we'd had our third child, they flagged a birth that they believed that he potentially had a lower spine problem. And we kind of didn't probably potentially handle that particularly well and made sure that, you know, we were quite concerned about it, obviously with our track record of having issues having kids. And so they thought that he had a tethered spine, which were basically in the Long term could impact him, walking could impact his bowel movements and could have quite significant long term health impacts. And often they wouldn't diagnose it until maybe two. And so they actually he had his first MRI when he was about two days and then we went through this whole process for about nine months. We went and got a second opinion out of Stanford as to whether or not we should have surgery. They actually recommended that we have surgery. We got an opinion out of Great Ormond street in the uk, they recommended that we shouldn't have surgery. And in the end we decided not on surgery and he's actually been fine. But what we found for the praneuvo scan was that both my husband and I have the same presenting concern that our son has, which is, you know, a low lying spine. Right, interesting. And so if we would have probably known that and known that it's hereditary and like while his presentation is very unusual in a child his age, it can be normal. And so it actually helped for us. I couldn't believe it when I opened up my scans and it said, oh look, actually this is something that's unusual about you. And then my husband up and out his one and it was something unusual about him too. And of course two people that have.

That chances are pretty high.

And so, you know, phenomenal to have that knowledge and that power to be able to better understand your body. Right.

Information. I bet you get better after that as well.

Totally. Like. And it also made me feel justified because obviously there was a lot of concern. And the New Zealand paediatric team were extraordinary, the neurological team were amazing. But it was actually really good to be able to have the ability to get other feedback as well globally. And I think one of the things that we sometimes forget as a country and this was when I'd had my second late miscarriage was actually a really good friend of mine said to me, she said, in New Zealand you've got a population of 5 million people, so your specialists don't necessarily see as many presenting concerns of the same issue. So, you know, if you keep having this problem, you need to go and get health care from somewhere else. And that's ended up with us seeing a fertility specialist out of Australia. And because he saw people like me all the time while in New Zealand system, my obstetrician would be like, oh, you know, this shouldn't happen again, you're fine, like you're young, you're fat, like just go again. And I was not prepared to take that risk. And it was good for us to go into another health system and have that experience and actually say no, actually these are the tests that we want to run. This has not been well explored. And then of course we went off on to have Charlie and Layla successfully with the information that we were given for that process. Right. And so we have to remember that we are a small country, that we don't get as much exposure and that, you know, if there is something that's seriously wrong, which in my instance, obviously it was having children, that it was really helpful to be able to get that support out of Australia at the time.

Absolutely. And that's when I look at what you've done and created from a professional standpoint of being an entrepreneur and creating successful businesses. You've given yourself opportunities and your family to go and get specialist treatment and care and that's such a privilege. But you know, the harder you work, the luckier you get. You created your own luck there. And so I think that's beautiful and it will be great as New Zealand's health system improves with tend that we can have access to preventative care.

Absolutely.

Because there's so many things we can be doing.

Yeah. And it's just about putting the, you know, the fence like right back from the cliff and not just, you know, not just like pouring the ambulance down the rock face every time. And so, you know, my dad's currently in hospital and like, you know, when I'm having this experience with him being unwell and like there are just so many areas for improvement and it's so frustrating because there's a lot of things that I think, I mean it's a, you know, the people that work in the environment are amazing but a lot of the infrastructure is old. You know, it's not cohesively considered. You know, how do you actually drive change right across us? So there's a lot of complicated issues that kind of, that are predated and pre existed within our system. But there are solutions. Right. And that's what I feel really positive about is the fact that we do have really, you know, strong solutions.

Now you're thinking to the future positively. We had Sam Stubbs here earlier today from simplicity and again very future focused. You know Sam.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Sam again.

Wants to like thinks very positively about the future of New Zealand and believes in it. I can sense the same in yourself.

I just get frustrated. I think maybe it comes from being an immigrant. But I am so grateful for this country. Me too. And like I just, I constantly just feel, you know, blown away by its beauty, by how happy the people are. Like, overall, people are like, you know, when you're in the streets, but, you know, you go into a shop, everyone's polite, everyone says, how do you do it? It's very different from being brought up in Sweden. Right. But I do think we also have this kind of, like, country almost, you know, nationalism, about being pessimistic, like. And it's been hard for a long period of time. And I've written a whole article for tomorrow, which is going into the Herald, about being optimistic about the things that we're actually doing while we're at. That's.

Love it. I'll put it in the show notes.

Totally. That's actually improving because there are so many things that are actually improving across our country. Whether you look at education, whether you look across justice, you know, there's a range of things that are going better. And. And I think we need to start telling ourselves that we're an incredibly successful, beautiful country and the rest of the world is privileged to come here. And for immigrants like us who come here and go, this is amazing. How do we make sure that we bottle that and that we sell it and that we get our country to really start performing? Because if you compare to Ireland, very similar, but completely different financial circumstances. And New Zealand's got that opportunity, but we're just not executing on it yet.

And Ireland's productivity is through the roof compared to New Zealand's.

I mean, it's just. And I like to compare New Zealand, I often compare it with SWED in a lot of different instances. And you look at Ireland, you look at Singapore, you have to be able to kind of look globally and say, how do we do better? So, yes, I'm feeling optimistic. I'm innately optimistic. Yeah.

I go back from. I was in Singapore, Hong Kong, speaking a couple of weeks ago, and just taking notes as I'm meeting people and sitting with a guy who's running Facebook for Asia Pacific and just looking at their challenges, I'm like, we can learn from this.

Totally.

We need to take those learnings, take them back to nz, and we can run and we can pivot really quickly here compared to these big nations.

Yeah, well, this is a thing, right? It's such a beautiful. And that's why I'm saying, yes, you know, we can help New Zealanders be the healthiest people in the world. I don't think it's beyond our grasp to be, you know, leading in terms of longevity, life longevity. Right. And so, like, we've got Such an amazing opportunity in such a small country to make a big impact. And so, you know, how are we prioritizing and spending our time to achieve that? So I'm quite excited about that.

I am too. Have you come across Dr. Darshan Shah?

No, I haven't, actually.

He's one of the leading longevity experts out of the us. I'd love to connect you guys. I had him on the show about a year ago. And you speak the same language?

Yeah. Cool.

And he's got some amazing research, so I think you'd definitely enjoy him.

Amazing.

So before 16.

Yes.

Let's talk about it. So I seen the petition come up. I think I got it emailed to me, perhaps, or maybe seen it on social media. I was one of the first to get my signature on that right away.

Thank you, we appreciate that.

It's amazing. So for the person that's never heard of it, right now, what is it? Why are you doing it?

So, look, we're looking to implement a minimum age of 16 for social media in New Zealand. And I think it's really basic. We put safeguards in place for our children in the physical world. So whether that's having a driving age or an age by tobacco and alcohol, and the harms from those things are actually proven to be probably not as bad as social media in some instances. Right?

100%.

And so we really need to apply that same rule to the online world, because while education is great and parents play a big part of it, the problem is that children having unlimited access to social media is damaging them long term. Right. And so, you know, when you look at our young people, you only go through puberty once. This is what Jonathan Haidt says. And, you know, we need to actually give them a better starting point than what we're currently doing. And you know, what we're seeing with addictive design, with the algorithm, with the type of content that children are being displayed with, it's not giving them the chance to develop in a way that's normal. Right. And I see it constantly, you know, we were in Australia, you know, you're going to a beautiful restaurant with your kids, we've got three of them, it's pretty chaotic. And the table next to us, there's a kid there on TikTok going constantly swiping. Right. And it's not normal, it's not gorgeous.

Growing up, it's just going up in their weeds.

Totally. And so we're looking to implement the minimum age of social media. Obviously, recently the Prime Minister has thrown his support about it as well, including committed to the fact that this will happen within the next before the end of the term, which is super exciting. We're delighted about that. We've got 45,000 signatures. But I think also what's really important is that.

By the way, sorry to interrupt. Do we need more signatures?

No, we're done.

Okay, cool.

We're done. We have delivered our petition. We did it about it feels like, you know, it was a while ago, but it was actually probably a week ago in my world. And yeah, so we delivered the 45,000 signatures last week, which was incredible. And you know, for New Zealand, that's a significant petition versus the one that they did in Australia, which was the 36 month petition, which was amazing. We actually had 1.8 times more engagement in New Zealand. So we actually have even a bigger mandate to actually drive change here. And so it's super exciting.

Yeah, I'm excited for it. And so when this change comes in, what role will the parents have to play in that?

Yeah, look, and I think getting into kind of the detail of how the legislation's gonna work, that will be for government. Right? And obviously they've got experts panels that are advising on that. And I think that parents have an active role to play, but they also need to be able to be given, you know, a passenger to say, actually, it's actually illegal, darling. You're actually not meant to access social media. And everyone else's parents are gonna tell them the same thing. And I think the most important thing that we achieve here is social norming. Like, you know, we know kids might try to vape or they might, you know, like sneak a beer, but they're not sitting in restaurants drinking alcohol and driving at 14. Like, that's not what's happening regularly. And so what we need to do is socially norm and give parents permission to be able to say, actually it's not okay, you shouldn't be on social media. And none of your friends are. And it's actually the whole concept around none of your friends are on social that's actually really important. You know, I'm raising a 13 year old who's not on social media and.

You know, most of his friends probably are.

All of his friends almost are. Basically. Right. And so he's not on Snapchat. He doesn't have that kind of network around him. And like he still manages. He's a really healthy, cool 13 year old kid. But he's missing out, right, because all of his friends are on there. And you know, I wish that they just texted him instead. He's got a dumb smartphone which has got SafeSurfer on it, so he can text people, but they're all on Snapchat and they're all on Instagram and they're all on TikTok. And none of that is something that he can access. And so, you know, for me personally, as a mum, yeah, it's selfish. I would like him to have that social network around him and for his friends to also be normalised onto not having social media. And it's interesting cause when I talked to my son about it and this initially, when it came out earlier this year, we were launching before 16, he went to school the next day and I said, what was the general sentiment around your peers? And he said, actually, most of the mum said, three years is not a very long time to wait.

There we go.

And so, like, they were kind of cool about it. And so he was like, actually, I thought it would be a big. Because, you know, particularly because you're my mum, and I'd get stuck about it. But actually it was fine.

It was amazing.

So, you know, I think. And a lot of kids are asking for this. You know, there was a recent study done that said, I think it was four out of 10 children or teenagers that are on social media don't actually want social media and they wouldn't be on there unless, you know, their peers were on it. And so even kids themselves are realising this is bad for them and they shouldn't have to realise that for us to be able to provide safeguards around them.

You think gaming comes into it as well?

I mean, look, I've got strong personal opinions, opinions of this and you'll be unsurprised to hear that my children are not allowed to do things like Fortnite and Roblox. They've got the old school Nintendo hard handheld devices. My son is allowed maybe 20 minutes, maybe a few times a week. Similar for my daughter. She's probably More likely allowed 10 minutes, but it's very limited on a very old school device in a public place in our family where we can see it. And he literally plays because he's a massive big football freak, FC26, that's all he plays on it. But he's got no desire outside of that. But it's funny because I even noticed with him that if he plays for a longer period, say we've lost track of time, or I'm putting down his little brother and I come down and he's done 30 or 40 minutes. I notice A change in his behaviour.

Grumpier, more agitated.

Totally. And like. And so I can immediately see the addictive design just of that as a device. And actually my favourite parenting tool is to ban him from Nintendo for like. And so he's had a Nintendo ban for the past and I can't even remember why but it's been blissful. He's had like a five day band, Nintendo bound. So it's about having something that you know, you can actually have as a device and it's fine. And he's learning self regulation but he also sees it himself. He also sees himself, you know why Mum and dad don't like it? Because that's when we sometimes have conflict. Right. So you can't protect your kids from everything and you just have to learn how to manage it in a way that works, you know, of course.

And that's hard. We're not going to be perfect, right?

Online, right?

Yeah, totally. And because you run multiple businesses and have done. How do you demonstrate that as. As a parent? Because your phone arguably is your business.

From time to time. Yeah. It's so hard.

It must be hard.

It's so hard. And look, honestly, like, I think it's been one of my most active decisions of the last two to three years has been to read more.

Good.

And so I was really anti having a Kindle for years. And about three years ago I bought myself a Kindle and I was, oh my God, this is revolutionary. Why didn't I get this sooner? What was I thinking? Because it's been one of my greatest delights, right. Has been. I now pick up my Kindle regularly. Cause I read a lot. I love books and I used to take great pride in having books. But it became challenging, you know, because, you know, you leave it at home or whatever it is. And so one of the things that I really do that we lead by example on is reading. Our kids read a lot. Both of my kids are bookworms and our third one is heading in the same direction. But that split around discipline. Cause people often tell me that we're lucky that our kids read. And they're not lucky, they're actually privileged. Because it's one thing we spoil them, rot in with as books. Like my husband was saying to me, oh my gosh, you bought them so many Christmas presents. And I was like 95% of it is books.

Brilliant. You know, and that's not a cost, it's an investment.

It totally is an investment. It actually gets passed down for the kids as well. It gets passed down from Tom to Layla to Charlie. Right. So it goes through the whole family. And so I spoil them with books and you know, if they can read as much as I had my friend tell me off the other day because I told off my daughter. Cause I found her reading in bed past, you know, bedtime. And she was like, you're actually telling her off for sneaking a book and a torch into her bed and her glasses. Right.

Encouraging that.

Yeah, she's like, actually, you know, let her get away with it, you know, sometimes. And I was like, yeah, you're probably right. Because you know, she's just, you know, how wonderful is that? Right. But reading and it's a discipline, like it's like a sport. Like I think the more you read, the more it actually positively is something that you get connected to and that, you know, you really relate to. So yeah, I love it. Reading is huge.

What have you read this year that really stands out?

Oh my God, a bunch of things. Like I'm currently reading Untangling the Teenage Girl, I think it's called. And so I'm reading it in advance of our daughter becoming, you know, a teenager. Cause she's nine and a half, but she's definitely hitting down that track. And it's actually quite. It's also helpful with boys. And so that's what I'm currently reading. And I'm finding that really good. I actually try to. One of my favourite books is actually Atomic Habits, which I tend to reread fairly habit. I love it regularly. And I've also, you know, with our son, it's something that I made him read quite early and then I make him reread as well. I actually read Grant Robertson's book recently, which I found really entertaining. I read Patty Gower's book. Wasn't that memorable. I read Jacinda's book. Yeah, I read all of them. Cause I actually I like, I do need, I think because my day jobs are quite serious and I spend a lot of my time feeling like I've got the weight of the world on my shoulders. I need to read stuff that is either like fiction and like, you know, Ken Folish or like, you know, something that completely is different from my day to day life or something that's quite specific. Like this is on teenage kids. Like I'm not thinking about how I'm raising my teenager every day. So it helps me to disconnect. But. And when I go on holiday, I read business books.

Brilliant.

So when holiday. Cause you're never really properly on holiday. When you're CEO of a large company, that doesn't really, really happen, but at least you're not in the day to day grind. But when I'm on holiday I actually crave business books, but when I'm in my day to day grind, I don't crave them.

That's pretty good, that nice balance going on there.

Totally. I love that. I try to just. Yeah. And I know it myself. Like, you know, tend. One of the reasons, you know, even you know, you're reading when you're on that holiday and it gives you inspiration for when you come back to work.

You know, you can implement new ideas and that's cool.

Totally.

And Cecilia, what does a day look like for you in terms of, you know, wake up time, some habits, Nutrition?

Yeah. So look, I'm pretty, I think I've got much better with my habits probably in the last five years or so and I'm much better at giving myself some. I was listening to your podcast with Jason Paris. So Jason is amazing. He's a fantastic CEO and I just, I love how he engages on LinkedIn. And he was talking about the importance of exercise and he was talking about the importance of having equipment at home. And that's been life changing for me. Since we've had equipment at home, that's made a huge impact in my life. And so I do exercise basically every day.

That's amazing.

And that makes me feel and I am really forgiving of myself. Like if it's 15, 20 minutes, not 30, then I'm okay with that. But I'm like, something is better than nothing. Most days it's probably 20 to 30 minutes. I don't get up before 6:30. I'm not an early riser. Like I think from years of sleep deprivation, of having three kids and just juggling has made me really like, I need seven to eight hours. I'm not one of those people that can operate off no sleep. And so, you know, if I'm going to bed 9:30, 10 and you know, reading for an hour, then that gives me my seven to eight hours of sleep. I'm really present with our children. Like, you know, we're at home, we do the lunch boxes, you know, the school run. We've got a walking school bus for our daughter which we've kind of kept up, which has been amazing. And with our four year old, we drop him at Kindy basically, you know, my husband actually together, basically drop him every day at Kindy together. And then my team is really good, they're really aware of the fact that I am only visible between certain hours. So I'm in the office for school hours and if they need something for me they, you know, I'm there during school hours, outside of school hours. So I pick my kids up from school and every day and kindy. And now they're an age where I can come back and work quite easily and they can go off and play and hang out together.

Which healthy for them to see you working as well.

Totally. And also just having those boundaries because when you're talking about, you know, like the phone and because it's interrupting, it's actually like, well, mum goes into my office and now mum is working. And so like actually it's. It's actually quite a big deal if you're interrupting but you guys can go and play. You've got so many things. You can read all of these things. Right. And I try to often get work done in the morning as well. Before I came in this morning, you know, I got up earlier this morning, got up at 6 and today actually is an unusual day. Cause I didn't get exercise in. Cause we had, you know, my dad's been unwell and all of these things. Right. And so I needed to submit this article for tomorrow. And so I knew if I didn't do that I would have it hanging over me. So it was, the first thing I did was submit it to my editor by 6:30 so I could get that off my plate for the rest of the day. Right.

Eat the frog, do that thing that's kind of maybe gonna stress you out for the rest of the day.

Totally. And I just knew that if I didn't get it done it would make me feel, you know, it would just hang over me. And I didn't know what the rest of my day would look like. I'm normally a really awkward organised person. Kind of have to be when you've got three kids and you're running, you know, several things. So I was like, nah, I need to get up early, I need to finish it. And I was quite tempted cause I worked late last night on my article and I've learnt when you're publishing material to sleep before you do. In particular, if you've written on something for a few days, I'm like, give yourself a break, don't click. Submit tonight, well done. And actually do it tomorrow morning with fresh eyes. So reread it, distill it down. And so that's what I did this morning and just, you know, it made me feel better for the day.

I love that those simple things and often the common sense is always common practice, right?

Totally.

So that's amazing. And you're very public facing and I imagine there's a lot of very positive response. But from time to time you're gonna get criticism.

I get a lot of criticism.

Okay, so how do you cope with that?

Yeah, I mean, look, I find it really challenging. I think the criticism has been, you know, escalating a bit. You know, a lot of people don't understand the circumstances or who you are or what motivates or drives you. So often I make that analogy and I think, you know, what was difficult for us was that, you know, we, for example, my food bag. Extraordinary growth, an incredibly successful business. Still is to this day, extraordinary successful business. And, you know, we were CEOs up until 2018 and the business went public in 2021 and the listing has been challenging. And what was really hard about that was that we got a lot of personal flack for it. In particular the women that fronted the brand, me, Nadia and Teresa. But, you know, we didn't list the company like we were shareholders. And that was really hard. And you kind of want to hit back at all the trolls and say, do you not understand how the mechanism works? Right. Do you not understand how business works? But you do just have to take a moment and go, actually, you know, it's not worth it. And in my instance, what I did ultimately was that I went back on the board. Right. So, you know, the business had had, you know, a couple of tough years and I went back on the board and took accountability and went back to within, you know, the mandate to help fix it. And we have stabilised and now back in growth. Right. Which is fantastic, well done. And I think for tend, what's been difficult is that, you know, when you're in an industry that is health, you know, and you're receiving public funding, a lot of people scrutinize you in the work that you're doing. And the way that I kind of tackle that is for being an open book. Like anybody that wants to criticise what we're doing, I always invite them to come in and see us. They never do. Yeah, of course, because I'm like, actually come and look at the work of what we're doing, come and look at our data, come into one of our clinics, understand what we're doing before you criticise us. Because if you don't understand what we're trying to achieve, it's very easy to misunderstand. But, yeah, it's challenging. And, you know, I just learn not to read the comments. Right. I think anyone that's got any level of recognition, you just learn not to read the comments. It's just not worth it.

Don't engage.

Yeah, yeah.

It's interesting. Yeah. I see us more and more with performers, particularly athletes that I work with. The hatred they get.

Yeah. I've been, like, horrific. Right?

That's horrible.

I mean, like, why? I mean, if being an athlete or being in politics, like, horrendously public, everyone's got an opinion on your performance. They've got no understanding of what's going on more broadly for you or the issues that you're having. Right. And so, like, whether you're. In my instance, like today, my dad is really unique. Well, and, you know, you know, whatever's going on in their personal life, you know, they might have had a kid sick for, like, five nights in a row, who knows? Right. But everyone feels like they've got this, like, mandate or ability to just comment on their performance. And I just. I think it's pretty unfair. And personally, I would never do it. And so I don't quite understand the people that do.

I think you're a good example, though, that people who are creating and striving and building don't have the time to be a keyboard warrior. You don't see Richie McCaw going, you suck. And he would never do it. Why? He's a builder, he's a creator, he's a striver. You're the same.

Totally.

You're never going to sit and do that.

And it's like. It's just odd, right? And like, for me, with before 16 in particular, like, over the last, like, 12 months, we've had a lot of OA requests in regards to, like, the engagements that we've had with government and, you know, like, why we're lobbying so hard for this. And it's like, it's pretty obvious. We've got a mental health crisis with our young people. And, you know, we've been lucky to have Jonathan Hayton, the Prime Minister, on our podcast, and the person that can actually drive change in this country is the Prime Minister.

That's it.

Like, that's the number one person. So, like, of course we want to engage with, you know, the Prime Minister. We also want to engage with and have engaged with the likes of labor and, like, a broad range of the political spectrum, including ACT and, you know, all of them. Right. But at the end of the day, it's a person who has a mandate that can make decisions and that's a person that we want to drive change, of course.

And that's Home Minister of the day of that episode. I'll put it in the show notes so people, that'll be very fascinating.

Yeah.

And so you Prime Minister Jonathan Haidt before 16 all works together. We fast forward 10 years. What might success look like?

Yeah, look, I think that we are on the start of fully understanding what smartphones and social media are doing to our children. But I think that the clarity of what will happen over the next decade will give us more tools to implement to protect our children. I don't think introducing a minimum age of 16 is a magic bullet for the long term. I think it's very hard to define what social media is going to look like 10 years from now. Just like we struggled three years ago to imagine what social media would look like today or what AI could do. And you know, I think we need to be on this ongoing journey and which is why we're lobbying for a regulator in this space. We think it's really important that there's a regulator and that we've got consistent prompt review of what's happening online because it's a fast moving game and we need to be ahead of the that curve wherever possible or quickly. Quickly. Correct. So yeah, it's going to be really interesting. I am concerned, like I look at the rise of AI and what it's doing and you know, companion and chatbots and all of these things. Right. It's actually really concerning.

Well, lady got married last week in Japan to her AI partner and there's like a hologram of them and they exchange rings and she's crying. What is happening?

Yeah. And look, I, I really worry about the consequences of that for our society long term. You know, I worry about, you know, how we're, how we're developing the human mind, you know, you know how all of these things connect. And I think we're just, we need to have some really strong infrastructure in place to help support it. And what I think is important, and I think a lot of people don't understand is that these social media companies are incredibly savvy. You know, they are behaving like tobacco companies, they are funding mental health charities, you know, they're funding the likes of netsafe in New Zealand and they've got these relationships and so they're very much embedded into our day to day society. And often, you know, my first question is when I see someone lobbying against what we're doing, I'm like my first Question is, what's their vested interest?

What's their motivation?

And look, you know, I think if you're a, if you're an influencer and you've got, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers or even tens of thousands of followers of Instagram, and a lot of them are young people and you're getting paid on your posts, then you don't have a vested interest in this legislation coming into play. And I think I'm really concerned about people not understanding the vested interest in the drivers in this space. And I think that we need to really understand, you know, where that's coming from. And you know, I can get up every day and look myself in the mirror and go, gee, we're working for, like, this is for our kids, this is for all of our Tamarike across all of Aotearoa. And that's really important to me. And that's our motivation, that's our vested interest, my vested interest as the kids. And so that's a priority. Right.

I love it. And that's why as soon as I seen it, I gotta get behind this. Gotta get you on the show.

Amazing.

Get more people understanding it as well.

Yeah. Thank you.

When they don't understand, often they're criticizing or they're against it.

Yeah, I think people don't understand. Like I make this analogy. When we started MyFibag back in 2012, we were hiring a lot of young people out of university. So the majority of our people that were working for us, both in our customer experience team and our customer love team, at our warehouse doing delivery jobs, most of them were 18 to 23. Amazing. They were so capable. That cohort of kids that we had came in and helped us launch a business. And when we found attend, what I found is that our young people are still equally amazing, but what they're coming through with is a whole different mind frame than what we had, you know, 12 years ago, 13 years ago. You know, we see a lot of anxiety, we see a lot of stress, and it's disproportionate to the environment that they're operating in, where, you know, they were in well paid jobs, you know, they've got largely stable homes, they've got very similar experiences. And what's changing, and the key thing that I'm seeing is changing is that, you know, 12 years ago my, you know, my younger cohort of co workers would sit and they'd talk to each other, you know, they'd have these amazing conversations. But instead now, during lunch breaks, everybody's just sitting on their phone and not having conversations.

Zero connection.

Zero connection. And it's feeding through into the workplace. And this generation is our next generation of, you know, doctors and builders and architects and lawyers and whatever it is. Right. But if they're not engaging with society, how are we going to get the best out of them? Right. And that really concerns.

I'm with you since I was chatting Mo Gaudot. So he was a chief business officer at Google X and left on ethical terms, really. And he was driving AI for them for a long time. And we're talking about the growth of AI and it's getting pretty phenomenal. Unbelievable speed that it grows at. And he says, james, the one thing that will become gold dust is human connection. Totally us being able to do this and connect in person. You and I could have jumped on Zoom and had a quick chat and recorded it, but actually this is gold.

Yeah, totally.

We want, we wanna be meeting with people in person and we wanna have like I run masterminds for leaders and yeah, we could do them all on Zoom. Yeah, but sitting in Queenstown, rubbing shoulders, having fun, that's where memories are made and impacts us. Right?

And look, that's the thing. And it's really funny. Like, you know, it's just, you know, the way that kids are learning how to interact and it's really interesting. Cause I'm watching this play out with my son. Cause he's got, you know, a couple of friendships that he's developed at school and with, you know, you know, you just, you just see that a lot of kids are moving to just not having to have face to face conversations with each other. They're just doing it, you know, online instead of asking someone in person and it's translating to, you know, via text. Do you want to be my girlfriend? Rather than doing it like in person and having that connection. Yeah, totally. And so, yeah, just so, so important to build that human connection and so important for us as parents and leaders. Inside is set the expectation that you will as well.

And I think being able to just converse. So my little boy, Finn, last year I was interviewing Chris Luxon and I said to Finn, do you want to come and interview him after I've interviewed him? And he went, yeah. So he got his little suit on and he got his questions and he said, sat there at the Canterbury Club with the cameras and it was great. And him and Chris had a 15, 20 minute conversation.

He's great with kids.

Amazing. Yeah, so I loved it. It was the highlight. It was way better than the interview that him and I did, that was the highlight. Him and him and Finn. But I want to expose Finn to opportunities to be uncomfortable and talk to people, maybe have. There's a power difference and there's an age difference.

Absolutely.

It's really good.

Yeah. And it's so important for children to be able to see, you know, the things that you can achieve. Right. How cool is that? To be able to see when you're the Prime Minister and go, you know, that could be me. I can aspire to be whatever I want to be. Right, Totally. An everyday empowering. Yeah, totally. And they're not built differently. We're all built the same. And so, you know, it's about the opportunities that you embrace. Right.

100%. So there's two things. One, I want to encourage the listener to follow before 16. I'll put all the socials and your socials in.

Thank you.

Also, you're a prolific speaker. We're both with celebrity speakers. So if somebody would like to have you in 2026, come and speak at their event. I'll put a link in there to your celebrity speakers profile. And let's. Last question. So if you and I were to fast forward many, many years into the future and you're highly aware that it's your last day here on Earth and someone very young that you love, maybe a great grandchild, they come into the room and they say, cecilia, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

I think for me, it's about pursuing happiness, you know, and again, it's what my husband's always said to me, like, happiness is wanting what you have. You know, I think a lot of people spend a huge amount of time pursuing things that doesn't make them happy. And you actually have to draw a line in the sand and say, actually, this is not making me happy. And so for my kids, that the key thing that I give them as advice every day is like, we want you to do things that make you happy. You know, you only have one life to live, you know, and that should be the pursuit, like, daily happiness. Not like happiness in a year or happiness in 10 years, because God knows where you are, you know, daily happiness, you know, and if you're not happy, then make brave decisions to change that. Right. Because it is a choice.

Yeah. Participate in your own rescue.

Right, Totally.

It's interesting you say that. So have you read Arthur C. Brooks?

I haven't, actually.

So he wrote a book with Oprah called Build the life you want.

I've heard of this. I've read an excerpt out of it.

Please get it for Christmas. So three things he said about happiness and you just labeled it perfectly. He said you experience happiness according to his research, when you're in the pursuit of joy, satisfaction or meaning. And I look at what you've done with all your businesses and they've brought you joy, you've been in pursuit. Satisfaction means you have to do hard work.

Yeah.

So you've been in the pursuit of that and you continue to be. And meaning, it's like tick, tick, tick.

Totally.

So I love that that's the advice you would give them.

Yeah.

It's beautiful.

Thank you.

Cecilia, thank you for being here today.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's been a blast.

Yeah, it's been great.

See you soon.

We will.

Cheers. Thank you.