It all starts here

Steve Maserow has spent nearly forty years in real estate, but he traces his whole relationship with money back to a belief formed at home: that there was never quite enough of it, and it had to be worked hard for. Host Rishi Ankus sits down with the Barfoot & Thompson Howick branch manager to talk about growing up in a hard-working, cash-tight family in Johannesburg, and how responding to a classified job ad led him to becoming a commission-only agent at nineteen. Steve talks candidly about selling real estate through the end of apartheid, including the first time he sold a home to a Black buyer in a neighbourhood they'd once been barred from, and about starting over from nothing when he emigrated to New Zealand in 1998. It's a conversation about the values that get set at the kitchen table and how they make an impact throughout your life. HighlightsSteve grew up believing there was never quite enough money to go around, right down to never leaving a light on in an empty room to save power, and that belief has shaped how he viewed money throughout his life. He fell into real estate in Johannesburg almost by accident, taking an unpaid, commission-only assistant role in a suburb where nobody knew him, and went on to outsell his own lead agent.Selling through the end of apartheid, he remembers the first time he sold a home to a Black buyer, in a neighbourhood they'd once only been allowed to walk through, not live in.He calls himself a financial refugee for a stretch after emigrating to New Zealand in 1998, negotiating for a desk and a phone and starting his career again from zero at thirty.Six months after joining Barfoot & Thompson's Meadowbank branch as an unproven "new boy", he was the branch's top agent, missing the year's overall top spot by less than $100 in commission.Growing up he learned one rule that still runs his business today: if you say you're going to do something, do it.Timestamps[01:02] What home looked like growing up in Johannesburg[02:46] The belief about money that started in that home[04:27] Falling into real estate almost by accident[09:11] Selling through the end of apartheid[12:03] Emigrating to New Zealand and starting over at Barfoot & Thompson[18:42] The one rule he grew up with, do what you say you'll do[21:53] Buying his first New Zealand home in Mount Wellington[23:43] Advice to his younger self, and the Lotto property questionGuest bioSteve Maserow has been Branch Manager at Barfoot & Thompson Howick since 2005. He joined real estate in Johannesburg at nineteen, answering a classified ad for a commission-only salesperson with no real idea what it involved, and spent a decade building a business there before emigrating to New Zealand in 1998. Under his leadership, Howick has been named Branch of the Year multiple times. Steve himself has ranked among Barfoot & Thompson's top branch managers nationally every year since 2022.Host bioRishi Ankus is General Manager – Sales at realestate.co.nz, New Zealand's longest-standing property portal, running since 1996, before Google even existed. Today it connects millions of Kiwis with homes, rentals and commercial spaces every month. Rishi leads the team that works directly with real estate agents and agencies right across the country, which keeps him close to the industry's day-to-day pulse, shifting sentiment on the ground, who's moving where.Links• barfoot.co.nz/our-people/smaserowIf Steve's money mindset had you nodding along, follow It all starts here wherever you get your podcasts.

Frances Cook's baby was six weeks old, asleep on her chest, when she took her first business meeting for what would become her own media business. Vanessa Williams talks to the personal finance expert, journalist and host of New Zealand's number one business podcast, Making Cents, about the business she built from the spare room of her home, with a newborn and a toddler in the house and her husband tag-teaming nappy changes. Frances walks through the six-month savings runway that got Making Cents off the ground, the marmite house in Wellington she and her husband scraped together a deposit for, and her blunt take on whether a home is really an investment. She also reflects on the well-meaning advice that once shrunk her sense of what she could do, and what she'd tell her younger self now.HighlightsFrances took her first business meeting at six weeks postpartum, baby asleep on her chest, and kept negotiating deals around contact naps for months afterwards.The whole launch ran on a six-month savings runway and her husband's stint on paternity leave, the two of them tag-teaming childcare through two closable doors between the living room and her spare room podcast studio.Growing up in an “epic” pastel-and-unicorn bedroom she shared with her sister, strictly split down the middle. The “marmite” first home in Wellington she and her husband nearly missed out on by five thousand dollars.Her hot take on home as an investment: it's an asset, not automatically an investment, unless you use it to access capital, take in a boarder, or free up equity to invest elsewhere.The advice she'd give her younger self: she's capable of far more than the well-meaning adults around her once assumed, including the one who suggested she work in a pharmacy because it had “pretty things.”Timestamps[00:00] How Frances built her business and podcast from her home office with a newborn in tow[01:48] Home growing up: a pastel, unicorn-wallpapered room split down the middle with her sister[04:54] Is a home really an investment? Frances's hot take[06:15] Leaving journalism to launch Making Cents from the spare room[13:13] Launching with a newborn: the six-month runway, paternity leave, and business meetings through contact naps[16:41] Working with her husband full time, and building their current home before trying for baby two[21:41] The “marmite house”: buying their first home in Wellington on a shoestring[24:10] Advice to her younger self, and the Lotto dream homeGuest bioFrances Cook is an award-winning financial journalist who specialises in making money simple for New Zealanders. From buying your first home, to investing, she loves talking about everything that makes your money life a little easier. She works as an independent journalist, hosting the Making Cents podcast, and providing commentary for outlets including TVNZ Breakfast, Stuff, and RNZ.Host bioVanessa Williams is General Manager – Customer at realestate.co.nz, New Zealand's longest-standing property portal. She's one of two voices behind The New Zealand Property Report, realestate.co.nz's monthly read on the market, alternating as spokesperson with CEO Sarah Wood, and she's the resident property expert on Frances Cook's Making Cents podcast. With more than a decade at the company, she's known for translating realestate.co.nz's own listings, stock and price data into practical guidance for buyers, sellers and renters.Links●       francescook.co.nz ●       Making Cents podcast ●       instagram.com/francescooknz

Paula Bennett was five when she started sitting out the front of her parents’ dairy in Kinloch, chatting to every customer who came in. By six or seven she was pedalling grocery deliveries to elderly locals who’d feed her home baking in return. Host Vanessa Williams sits down with the former Deputy Prime Minister for a conversation that runs from that tiny, five-or six-hundred-person Taupo village through seventeen house moves before she turned twenty-two, a baby at seventeen and the shame that came with it, and a first home at nineteen with no working oven for seven months. Paula talks candidly about using moving house as an escape hatch in her twenties, the rest home dishwashing job that pointed her towards university and then fifteen years in politics, and the dinner table joke from John Key that eventually led her to Bayleys. HighlightsGrowing up living above her parents’ Kinloch dairy on the shores of Lake Taupo, a village of five or six hundred people; at five she’d sit out the front chatting to every customer who came in, and by six or seven was pedalling a bike basket of groceries to elderly locals who’d bake her something in return.Moved house seventeen times by the time she was twenty-two, and says she later used moving as an escape hatch in her twenties, "fresh start, move house," whenever life wasn't going right.Grew up at a strictly patriarchal dinner table where she couldn't speak until spoken to and watched her brothers get freedoms she never did; that "innate sense of unfairness" is what turned her into a feminist.Had a baby at seventeen as a solo mum in 1987, wasn't allowed to see her daughter's ultrasound scan in case she still chose adoption.A move to Auckland after her brother's death became her reinvention: washing dishes at a rest home surrounded by professional women who told her the alternative was minimum wage and struggle, and who pushed her towards a university degree in policy.Fifteen years in politics, including serving as Deputy Prime Minister, ended with a dinner table joke from John Key, "who's going to employ Paula?", that led her to Bayleys, where she now works in client engagement and strategic advisory.Guest bioIn November 2020, Paula Bennett joined Bayleys in the commercial division. Paula has been promoted to National Director of Customer Engagement and Advisory. She leads Bayleys' engagement with select corporate, government, large developer and private wealth clients, excelling in building relationships, understanding client needs and tailoring a property plan across Bayleys' offerings, including transacting large property deals. Paula is also integral in supporting leadership across women in commercial property.During her 15-year career in politics, Paula Bennett served as Deputy Prime Minister and a Cabinet minister with portfolios including social development, associate finance, state services, police and local government. She is currently Director of Strategic Advisory at Bayleys Real Estate, Pharmac Board Chair and Board Chair of Sea Cleaners. Paula has a podcast with the NZ Herald, now in its 9th season. Paula is Māori, with Tainui ancestry.Host bioVanessa Williams is General Manager – Customer at realestate.co.nz, New Zealand's longest-standing property portal. She's one of two voices behind The New Zealand Property Report, realestate.co.nz's monthly read on the market, alternating as spokesperson with CEO Sarah Wood, and she's the resident property expert on Frances Cook's Making Cents podcast. With more than a decade at the company, she's known for translating realestate.co.nz's own listings, stock and price data into practical guidance for buyers, sellers and renters.Links● https://www.bayleys.co.nz/paula-bennett ● https://www.linkedin.com/in/paula-bennett-56983886/Follow "It all starts here" on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart or YouTube so you don't miss the next one

When James Mustapic's mum left for a trip to Europe, he started filming videos recapping Shortland Street's weirdest moments from her freezing Dunedin living room, meant purely to catch her up when she got home. She loved them, and so did some of the show's own cast, who started sharing the clips themselves. Host Vanessa Williams talks with the comedian, TV personality and Celebrity Treasure Island 2023 winner about that accidental start, after years of unwatched bedroom comedy videos beforehand, the discipline that turned it into a real career, and why, eight and a half years into the same Auckland flat, he's still a committed homebody. They also get into his nightly diary habit, nearly eleven years running, and why his new, bigger Auckland bedroom has him hunting down the bar heater he grew up with in Dunedin.HighlightsGrowing up in a famously cold Dunedin house, he got by on an electric blanket and a glowing red bar heater long before the family got a heat pump.James started filming Shortland Street recap videos from his mum Janet's Dunedin living room at 15, meant only to catch her up while she was travelling in Europe; before long, cast members from the show were sharing the videos themselves. Before that hit, there were years of unwatched comedy videos filmed from his bedroom, purely for practice, and that same bedroom is now, rather less glamorously, a bathroom.He also won the New Zealand International Science Festival's Science Idol with a chemistry-themed parody of Justin Bieber's “Boyfriend”, about atoms bonding, beating his own teacher to take the prize.In 2023, he won Celebrity Treasure Island and donated $100,000 to Gender Minorities Aotearoa, a charity run by and for trans people, sleeping under a hessian-sack shelter on bunk beds by the lake in Wanaka the whole time.He's lived in the same Auckland flat for eight and a half years, calls himself a committed homebody who gets nervous about change, and has kept a nightly diary for almost eleven years to process each day before sleep.Guest bioJames Mustapic is a celebrated New Zealand comedian, who began his career with the online underground sensation Shorty Street Scandal in 2014, and ventured into stand-up comedy in 2015. He is now well-known in New Zealand for his hit TVNZ+ series Abandonment Issues and James Mustapic His Mum a Man, as well as his web series Repressed Memories. He maintains a regular presence on the NZ comedy circuit and has appeared on numerous TV comedy panel shows, including Have You Been Paying Attention, 7 Days, and Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee.Host bioVanessa Williams, General Manager - Customer, realestate.co.nz. Vanessa is one of New Zealand's most trusted voices on property, at home unpacking market data for industry audiences and translating it into practical guidance for everyday buyers and sellers. She regularly appears across national television, radio, print and digital media. Her commentary combines the extensive listings, search and market data held by realestate.co.nz.Links• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamesmustapic• Tik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/discover/james-mustapic • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@james-mustapic

Lisa Tai’s parents once bought a strip of land in West Auckland with another Fijian family they’d barely met but who happened to share the same last name and were going through the very same stage of life, subdivided it, and built two almost identical houses side by side. The two families lived there together for about twenty years and became family. Host Sarah Wood sits down with Lisa, who spent nearly two decades at Deloitte, rising to partner and establishing the firm’s Pacific Services Group, before stepping away to lead Ronald McDonald House Charities New Zealand. She talks about arriving in Auckland as a four‑year‑old straight after a coup in Fiji, growing up in a caravan through her first New Zealand winter, and how six months into the top job at an organisation built entirely around giving struggling families a home away from home has only sharpened what home has always meant to her: wherever her family is.HighlightsLisa left Fiji at age four, straight after the 1987 coup, and landed in West Auckland in the middle of winter with nothing. The whole family of five lived in her dad’s boss’s caravan.Her parents later bought land in West Harbour with another Fijian family they’d just met, at exactly the same stage of life.Nineteen years at Deloitte took her from graduate to partner.Now six months into running Ronald McDonald House Charities New Zealand, she is overseeing houses in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Invercargill that gave 4,200 families almost 46,000 nights of accommodation in 2025, plus an onsite school so siblings do not fall behind while a brother or sister is in hospital.Her dad has since signed up as a volunteer, doing the Auckland house’s food deliveries and donation pickups every Tuesday. Ronald McDonald House has become a family affair.The photos on her wall, and a tapa cloth gifted by family in Fiji, are what she says she would carry into the next home, reminders for her children of relatives they will never meet.Guest bioLisa Tai is a proud Fiji-born New Zealander of Rotuman and Fijian heritage, proudly raised in West Auckland, a place that has deeply shaped her sense of identity, community and home. She is a wife to Junior and mum to Keilani and Kanoa. Lisa spent almost 20 years at Deloitte, including as a Partner, where she established Deloitte’s dedicated Pacific Services Group, focused on creating pathways for young Pacific people to enter, grow and thrive in the corporate world.After nearly two decades in the Big Four environment, Lisa made the decision to step more deeply into community and social impact. She believes our contribution can look different across the different seasons of our lives, and that sometimes growth means being willing to leave places of comfort and success to serve in new ways.Lisa is now the Chief Executive of Ronald McDonald House Charities New Zealand, where she has the privilege of leading an organisation that supports families through some of the most challenging times in their lives. She is passionate about servant leadership, empowering families and young people, creating opportunity, and using leadership to strengthen communities and make a meaningful difference.Host bioSarah Wood is the Chief Executive Officer of realestate.co.nz, New Zealand's longest-standing property website, which has been helping people find their perfect property since 1996 (even before Google). Since taking the helm in 2019, she has led the organisation through a period of innovation and growth, helping position it as one of New Zealand's leading technology businesses.If Lisa’s story has stayed with you, Ronald McDonald House Charities New Zealand relies on donations, fundraising and volunteers to keep families close when a child is in hospital. Find out how to give your time or support at rmhc.org.nz. 

When Shane Cortese's second son was born, his partner took their newborn to Australia for six weeks, and Shane got the house, and the Rugby World Cup, to himself. Except the house went quiet, and Shane, one of New Zealand's most recognised faces from Shortland Street and Outrageous Fortune, tweeted the line that ended up in the Herald: your house is just a house until it's got kids and family around it, then it becomes a home.In this conversation with host Vanessa Williams, Shane talks through a childhood spent between the UK, Tauranga and Wellington, his last years of school living in a hotel room in Palmerston North, the two very different homes he bought in London in his twenties, and the keypad code that means his teenage sons never need to knock. Thirty years into realestate.co.nz's own story of home, Shane's is a reminder that it’s the people that make a house a home. Highlights● A childhood on the move. Shane's parents separated early, and he grew up between the UK, Tauranga and Wellington before spending his last years of school living in a hotel room in Palmerston North, where his mother managed the Britannia and his Saturday job was cleaning out the beer tanks for pocket money.● The tweet that stuck. When his second son was born and the house went quiet for the first time, Shane tweeted that a house is just a house until it's got kids and family around it, then it becomes a home. The New Zealand Herald picked it up.● A code, not a key. His two sons now have the keypad code to his front door, so neither of them ever has to worry about losing a key. Between his place and their mother's, Shane says the boys have two loving homes, and that was always the plan.● His first home. A three-bedroom semi-detached Victorian in Kingston-upon-Thames, bought for £76,000 in 1996 with a fellow cast member from The Rocky Horror Show in the West End.● His second home, sight-bought. A renovated 17th-century stable house turned show home in Carshalton, Surrey. Shane fell for it on a drive-by, bought it that same day, furniture and all, and moved in with two bags of clothes.● Chasing not mediocre. On stage, at the auction rostrum and on the cricket pitch, Shane traces his drive back to having to prove himself fast as a kid who kept moving, and borrows a line from Ted Lasso to sum it up: don't you ever settle for fine.Guest bioShane leads the Harcourts Auction Division as the National Auction Manager, where he oversees auction operations, provides network wide training on effective auction strategies, and ensures Harcourts auctioneers remain at the forefront of the industry.As Harcourts' representative in the REINZ Auction Sector Group, Shane works to ensure auction documentation remains current and relevant. His professionalism and calm presence on the auction floor have been pivotal to his success, having called thousands of auctions and achieving over $1 billion in unconditional sales throughout his career, however his best job is father to two boys circumventing their way through teenage years!Host bioVanessa Williams, General Manager -Customer, realestate.co.nz. Vanessa is one of New Zealand's most trusted voices on property, at home unpacking market data for industry audiences and translating it into practical guidance for everyday buyers and sellers. She regularly appears across national television, radio, print and digital media. Her commentary combines the extensive listings, search and market data held by realestate.co.nz.Links• https://harcourts.net/nz/office/mitchell-residential/people/shane-cortese• https://www.instagram.com/shanecortese/?hl=en• https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanecortese/• https://www.facebook.com/ShaneCorteseOfficial/ Follow it all starts here wherever you get your podcasts.