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I was someone who never really had a lot of control over my finances going back right to the beginning, you know, and I'd never really thought too much about about wealth, and that all came crashing down on February this year. I can tell you that Kiwis are craving a form of connection out there. I think we're feeling very, very disconnected as a country.
But it's fixable, Koto.
I'm Garth Bray and we're doing things a little differently on Shared Lunch for the next few weeks. More than money is about exploring the wealth choices that change us. Let's open up the conversation about what wealth really means beyond investing. We'll hear from some famili you folks and chat about the choices they've made on their wealth journey. Today we're speaking to someone who needs almost no introduction, Patty Gower. But first some important information you always need to consider.
The experience is shared in this episode. Are not advice or a recommendation or opinion by guests to invest or act in the manner they have. An appearance on the series is not an endorsement by Shares is of the views of the presenters or guests. They're not financial experts and their views of their own.
The Inimitable Patrick Gower as ends it on. He said in its press release just last week when they said, congratulations, you've still got issues.
Yeah, that's right.
So that took some exciting news for next year that Patty Gower has issues, will be coming back from the crypt, open the Crypt, I guess and back out. But yeah, some amazing news. But I still don't really know what Inimitable means, but I think it means sort of out there.
Yeah, and look, you've just come off tour as well. By the time people see this, you'll be having a break. But fourteen towns, yeah, three weeks.
It's something I never thought i'd be doing, gath. You know, I started my career as a as a newspaper journalist, you know, twenty five years ago, and I didn't have big visions of going into TV or anything. So yeah, I've done fourteen stage shows from Rocky euro Stuart Island all the way up to White Tangy, going through all of regional New Zealand. And that's why my voice. Listeners and viewers might not notice, but my voice is a few octavees lower because I've really worked on that larynx.
I thought you were just making an effort to sound extra sort of today.
Yeah. No, it's not my cheesy's sexy voice.
But it's been amazing to see people, you know, a couple of things. Seeing Kiwi's upfront and in their places is always cool. But you know, I've never been on stage or anything like that. It's got sort of elements of stand up comedy to it. It's a performance. This is all completely new to me. So it's been a massive adventure.
How was it getting that immediate feedback to something you say, which is totally unlike standing in front of a camera, even in a studio conducting an election debate, Right, You've got people telling you what they think straight away, that's right.
And I think, you know, I hadn't realized that I'd never done you know, amateur theater. I'd never done been in a school play, you know, never. I just hadn't done this. And of course you will know, but other people won't realize. You know, in TV, actually it can be a very dead environment. You know, there can be a camera and that's it might not even be a camera operator these days because some of them are remote.
So hearing the audience and kind of you can hear a pin drop, you can hear a gasp, you can hear a laugh, you can hear them raucously laugh is
something totally different. And I think in what I've been doing, it's got elements of stand up comedy, but it's also got some heavy stuff about mental health and the way that I've dealt with depression, anxiety, anger issues, addiction issues when it came to alcohol, And you can feel the audience just listening, listening to this intensely personal stuff that
you're telling them. And despite doing fourteen shows, I know the parts that I get to where it gets into the heavy content and I always take a sharpened take of breath and you feel the audience really kind of close in. So it's been an amazing feeling really, so.
A lot of you sharing what are you getting back from that? What are you hearing from people? That shapes this conversation that you're having.
Yeah, I think a lot of the work that I've done this year has been in terms of losing my job at newshap and then pivoting. You know, I've got a book out This is There for News, and that's got a lot in it about the way that I got through my mental health and addiction struggles, and I've basically taken that on the road and made it into a performance that's got a whole lot of funny jokes
in it. You know, everyone's laughing. But I leave behind four lessons that are also in my book, and they're really around connection and our need as humans to connect and how if we're in trouble we should try to connect. That's around the second one is optimism, living a life that is more optimistic when you're confronted by a whole
lot of bad stuff. The third thing that I talk to people about and is in my book as well, is around purpose, finding purpose in what you do and working with purpose, and potentially for a lot of people my age, rediscovering your purpose and your work or when you're parenting or living your life. And then the fourth thing that I talk to people about and I've written about in the book is change be prepared to change yourself, you know, and that could be when you're pivoting because
of what's happened to you and I this year. You know, we've both been made redundant and we've had to pivot, or it could be a bigger change.
In your life.
For me, it was giving up alcohol, you know, now over one thousand days sober on December twenty eighth. The same of the ad thank you for thank you for the clap means a lot, you know. And for me, you know, I found after using those things that I was able to change and get rid of something in my life that that, you know, that was holding me.
Back, which was drinking. So that's what I've been going around the country doing.
So it's it's it's really rewarding to pass those messages on. And in terms of what people are hearing, I just can tell that Kiwi's are craving connection. They go so quiet when I talk about these things. They listen so intently. It doesn't matter whether you're an invocagol warnaka all the way up here in Hamilton, Palmi, New Plymouth, different audiences, different people every time. But I can tell you that
Kiwis are craving a form of connection out there. I think we're feeling very very disconnected as a country.
Weirdly, we've never been more connected there, I know. I know Watra, fast, fiber optic, cave, all the social media, all the reasons, all the ways that people can can link up and link and whatever they're doing. Right, Yes, how that's not just not cutting the muster of that.
That's right.
That's right, And there's something going on out there because I know what happens when I talk about it and the audience goes very quiet. I know what happens when they come up to me afterwards when I'm signing my books. I know what they say to me, I know what they message me afterwards. And they are all craving connection. They feel disconnected. They want to look at simple things that they can do to improve their lives because everyone is feeling that little bit unsatisfied and unhappy and just
not quite where they want to be. And I think there's a strong sense of that out in New Zealand. What I would say about it is, I don't think it's not something that we need to we need to worry about it, but it's fixable. You know, there are just there are ways of doing things. And I know I talk about my own ditching alcohol. I say to people could be as simple as going for a walk with your partner without your phone. You know, these are the little things that we can do to improve our
connection and improve our lives. So, you know, if anything it is, yeah, we've got a problem there, but it is something that is fixable through our own actions.
They say great wealth can be made through finding a problem and fixing it. You've sort of found a way to convert the problem into a solution for you and a solution for a lot of other people too, hopefully.
Yeah.
Yeah, And I mean, you know, part of it is I'm now you know it's going to sound random, but I'm now running a business. You know, I'm not an employee of anyone anymore. I'm contracted to stuff and that's my main place. But it's through a company called Believer Believer Media, and through that I'm going to run my tour and I'm selling the book and all of these
other things. And I've got to kind of basically make money in this business so that I can do the kinds of things that I want to do, which I connect with Kiwis through through journalism and through my performance and through my work. So I've kind of really, you know, I just never thought i'd be doing this sort of thing where I'm kind of like trying. You know, I've got to I've got to watch my pennies. I've got
to see what everything costs. I've got to make sure that I'm bringing in enough to keep going to keep doing what I'm doing.
You know.
I mean, I'm forty seven years old and i'd been in a job since the day that I left university. I had been in a journalistic job in some way or the other.
Yeah. Yeah, And you.
Know, you suddenly have to think about a huge range of things that you just took for granted, that someone else ordered, that someone else paid for it. Keep track of totally those responsibilities. Really, if you don't do it now, it doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen.
And it's really important if you're in a business and you've got to you've got to make money to spive. You can't misappointments, you can't not put that through. You can't do this all of these little things. No one is going to come and clean up after you. You know, you need to do it if you want to make more money.
It sounds like a tremendous about a pressure to put on your seat. It's coming out of this, yeah, relationship with employment.
Yeah, that's right.
And I think you know the thing about coming out of a long relationship with employment is when it first happens, it just seems so big, you know. So when Newshub shut down just up the road here and it wasn't that long ago, and on the day, it just felt to me like this massive problem. All my friends are losing their jobs. What's happening with the industry? Where do I go? What does this mean? It just felt like everything in front of me was blocked out by this
huge thing called newsub kind of closure. And with time that becomes smaller and you can see it for what it is and look to get find ways around it.
But you know, in that immediate beginning.
It's just this big kind of thing that's right in front of your face and you've got this big problem. But you know, my advice to people in that situation there's a lot of us who are losing our jobs, right is yes, it's going to seem big on day one.
On day two, on day three.
But with time, you're going to see it as something smaller and you're going to be able to find ways around it. You have to be paid, and then you have to look for the ways to get around this big problem that's come into your life. And for me, that has been turning myself into a business as random as that's as that sounds, monetizing a lot of the
things that I do and being creative with it. You know, doing a tour of New Zealand fourteen centers is creative, Like, there is no question, Like I cannot believe that it's so creative that I sort of have to pinch myself that it's just happened because it is just so out being.
It's probably too soon to work out if it's been the biggest and best financial decision you've ever made, go on to it. I suspect it's probably part of something bigger. Yeah, But if I can ask you to sort of think a bit about that and think about wealth and what it means to you and a wealth choice that you've made in the past that you sort of think, Hey, I'd like to share that with people because that worked for me.
Yeah, Yeah, I think.
You know, I actually did a podcast like this maybe about twelve months ago, right of in the similar sort of space, and I actually didn't really care that much about money in that interview, and I didn't really have any good answers around wealth because I had not faced insecurity financially right because, you know, I'd had a job, and you know, by the time there, I had a well paid job, very you know, seemed relatively stable. It's
never stable in the media, but it seems stable. And I'd never really thought too much about about wealth or anything like that, and that all came crashing down on February this year because you'd lose everything, you know, you lose the security, you lose the monthly paycheck that covers all of the mortgage and all of those kinds of things. So I think, you know, if anything, the best advice that I would have is is always is two things. Always in your mind. Know that your job is not
going to be stable. And I did have that in the back of my mind. The day that it happened, I was like, I did actually think that this could happen one day. I'd minimized it to about a ten percent chance, but at least I wasn't shocked, you know.
And then in terms of that, for me, I was someone who never really had a lot of control over my finances going back right to the beginning, you know, in recent years, combined with all these other things I'm doing, I actually started to get a bit more control over my finances. And though how much is going to the mortgage, how much has been saved, what's in the key we saver,
how much is there if something goes wrong? All of these things, luckily, and a lot of it, this will sound random, has had to do with giving up drinking.
You know.
That brought a whole element of control into my life, including over my finances. So not just the money that was getting burnt up against the wall, as they say, but in terms of just having much more control all
over my life, and that included finances. So when things went downhill or whatever it's west and downhill, isn't it, When things we could put when things we could put down the road, at least I had some control and an idea of where I was at and how long I could go for and how long I could try something like a pivot, so I didn't have to panic. You know, obviously you do panic. But I didn't have
to go and take another job right away. I could go, Okay, I've got some time to try some things like setting up my own business that can make my content, which is called Believer Media. And the only reason I could do that, this is a long winded explanation, is because I had some control over my finances, you know, And lots of people at Cheesy's will be like whoa, you know, because they've got control because they're investing, but maybe they don't. And I think, you know, there's lots of us that
don't have control all of our finances. And that's something that I didn't have for about twenty to twenty five years. I do now, and thank Goodness for that.
So in twenty twenty five, that's your challenge to Kiwis.
Get in control, Get in control, get in control of yourself, and get in control of your finances. And they are interlinked, you know, find find ways to you know. My message to Kiwis is this, use things to improve your life like what I've done. Live more optimistically and get more connection, work and live with purpose. Find ways to change things that you want to change and that can help you bring that control over your life and that includes your finances.
It really does fantastic.
Thank you so much, PG, Patty Gower, amazing and thank you as well. Thank you for listening. If you're listening, you're on Spotify or Apple wherever you get your podcasts. If you're watching, you're on YouTube. And if you like what you see, let us know and let us know what you'd like to see next. That's us for now.
QUIM with.
More Than Money is a series about the wealth choices that change us as Cheeseys grows. We want to be able to provide a space for shared experience that can benefit everyone who wants to grow their wealth, whatever path it takes. Now, there are more ways to wealth with Chazys beyond investing. Log in to see our Ultra Flexible Save and pisave accounts, get a quote for cost effective cur insurance, or join our Chase's kiwisavi a scheme. There's a world of choice so you can build wealth your way.
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