We’ve got a great episode of Give It A Nudge today as Steve sits down with Nima Kermani, the founder of Kermani Capital. Nima’s business has seen exponential growth over the last year, but the road to building a $7 million property portfolio wasn't exactly a straight line.

Nima shares the story of how getting fired from his last job was the final push he needed to go all-in on his own business. We dive into his history as a hyper-productive paperboy at age 13, and the brutal life lesson he learned at 17 when he lost $10,000, his entire life savings at the time, to an online scam.

The conversation also touches on the patterns in Nima's career, including the time he tried to work two full-time finance jobs simultaneously, his brief stint as a model, and the terrifying transition from being a solo operator to hiring his first staff members. To wrap things up, Nima puts Steve in the hot seat to talk about the hardest lessons he’s learned about ego and leadership.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro and the exponential growth of Kermani Capital

01:14 - Getting fired and why Nima finally decided to give it a shot

05:24 - The wealthy parents banter and the guarantor loan shortcut

07:15 - The 13-year-old paperboy hustle and losing his savings to a scam

14:53 - The secret to landing jobs: Applying for 1,000 positions at a time

16:46 - The pattern of getting fired and working two jobs at once

18:54 - Addressing the rumors: Nima’s history in modeling

23:18 - The fear of the first hire and the reality of founder responsibility

27:02 - Future plans for Kermani Capital and launching a property fund

30:35 - Renting by the room: Solving the housing shortage while boosting yield

32:29 - Steve's hardest lesson: Dealing with internal turmoil and ego

Steve sits down with Rowan McNamee, co-founder of Mary Technology, the legal AI startup that just closed a $7M funding round led by OIF Ventures to completely disrupt how litigation teams handle evidence.

Rowan’s journey started where all great business ideas do: pitching his mate on the way home from a bucks party. As a former family lawyer, Rowan intimately understood the absolute misery of taking hours of handwritten notes and spending weeks manually digging through thousands of case documents. So, he helped build a solution to eliminate the "fact chaos." Mary Technology is a Fact Management System (FMS) that can ingest thousands of pages of complex, unstructured legal documents and spit out a fully organized, actionable fact record in just 10 to 20 minutes.

We dive into the origin of the company's unique name (yes, it’s named after his actual Aunt Mary), and how they hit 10x ARR growth in 2025 with over 2,000 lawyers globally—including heavyweights like Shine Lawyers and Maurice Blackburn—now using the platform. Rowan also opens up about the "delusional optimism" it takes to get an AI startup off the ground, opening their new San Francisco office, and launching a self-serve model so small-to-mid-sized firms can get the exact same fact management power as the global giants.

Hit play and get the inside scoop on one of Australia’s fastest-growing legal tech startups.

What We Cover:

00:00 - Intro and the elevator pitch for Mary Technology

02:50 - Founding the company and pitching the idea at a bucks party

03:32 - Why they named a highly advanced AI after his Aunt Mary

07:24 - The original product idea and the misery of manual legal work

11:49 - Eliminating "fact chaos" and turning weeks of document review into 20 minutes

13:42 - Raising $7M with OIF Ventures, launching in SF, and scaling the team

21:50 - Navigating the exploded Legal Tech market and standing out

23:56 - Co-founder dynamics and the heavy weight of founder responsibility

30:19 - How the platform handles everything from foreign languages to GIFs

35:00 - The 59% time-saving pitch and their new self-serve model for smaller firms

37:45 - Team offsites, guest speakers, and getting way too competitive at lawn bowls

In this episode of Give It A Nudge, Steve sits down with Dain Walker, CEO of the branding agency Rivyl. Dain has built a global agency from the ground up, and brings a very direct, no-nonsense approach to building businesses and brands.

Dain shares his journey, starting with his childhood in and out of foster care, and explains how a mentor's "rubber band" analogy helped him reframe those early challenges as a foundation for his resilience.

We also get into the difficult realities of running an agency. Dain opens up about a cash flow crisis in early 2024 that brought his company within days of missing payroll. He walks Steve through the "ego death" required to take full ownership of the situation, and his contrarian strategy to expand and spend more while competitors were shrinking.

With Steve and the team currently in the middle of a 90-day content sprint, they spend some time diving into practical content strategy. Dain breaks down his 3-Circle Framework to help founders find a genuinely interesting niche, explaining why creating content just to "get leads" is a losing battle.

They also discuss the impact of AI on content creation, why raw human experience is becoming more valuable, and Dain’s subtle "sneaky love" approach to team leadership.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Dain’s origin story

04:18 - Hustling Pokémon cards at age 7 & lessons from foster care

08:41 - The "Rubber Band" mindset: Reframing childhood trauma into resilience

14:28 - Navigating a cash flow crisis and the reality of founder ego

18:46 - The contrarian playbook: Expanding when the market is shrinking

29:33 - The 90-Day Content sprint: Moving past the "get leads" mentality

36:47 - The 3-Circle Framework: Finding a content niche that actually works

44:21 - How AI is making genuine human connection the ultimate premium

51:15 - "Sneaky Love": Dain’s approach to nudging his team toward their potential

58:41 - The float pod vision and writing a business book in 3 weeks

Links:

Connect with Dain Walker → https://www.linkedin.com/in/dainwalker/

Rivyl → https://www.rivyl.com/

Agency Podcast → https://www.youtube.com/@agencypodcast/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timestamps:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links:

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

Zyft → https://zyft.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro and the authenticity of unedited podcasts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timestamps:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links:

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

AirLabOne → https://airlabone.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timestamps:

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

05:47 – Learning strict brand discipline at Tom Waterhouse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links:

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

Lawpath → https://lawpath.com.au/

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

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

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

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

In this episode of Give It A Nudge, Steve sits down with Jacqui Clarke, ex-Deloitte Private Partner and author of Stop Worrying About Money, to talk about the single most important number 95% of people don't know: "What does it cost to open your front door?"

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

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

Timestamps:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

58:30 – Closing thoughts

LINKS

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

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

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

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

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

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