Recorded At Red Nine

Recorded At Red Nine Businesses Building Canterbury

16/09/2026

Plato went from 55 staff to 87 in six months during the COVID boom and made no more money at the bigger size. John Plato on growing faster than the structure underneath you, and the honest question he now asks his partners every six months.

Full episode with John Plato, founder of Plato, out now.

Recorded at Red Nine | businesses building Canterbury

15/09/2026

Plato bought the derelict New City Hotel on Colombo Street. It's becoming their new office, 1,600sqm over three floors, an in-house gym, saunas and ice baths, a hidden wh***ey room and a rooftop bar. Ready in March.

Full episode with John Plato, founder of Plato, out now.

Footage pilfered from instagram

Recorded at Red Nine - Businesses Building Canterbury

15/09/2026

Nineteen years of building an agency, in forty-five seconds.

John Plato started Plato at a kitchen table with $3,500 in the bank. It's now the South Island's largest full-service agency, and he's turning the derelict New City Hotel on Colombo Street into its new home.

In the full episode: the growth spurt that wasn't a win, why he sits on four of his clients' boards, what he actually looks for when he hires, and what he'd tell a business two years in.

Out now.

06/09/2026

"I get treated differently because I'm bald and I'm a woman."

Di Foster has been bald three times, this time from perimenopausal alopecia.

But there's a weight that comes with it. A seven-year-old asked her mum whether Di was a girl or a boy. The mum answered, "I don't know what it is."

Her dad taught her something different: that what mattered most about her was how she thinks and what she contributes, not how she looks.

25/08/2026

"You're direct as f***." Andy's verdict on Di Foster, and she takes it as the compliment it is.

She once sat in an airport firing voice notes at him, pulling his website to bits. He got out of bed at a stupid hour to start actioning it.

Business advice from Di Foster with the roundabout route removed, full episode wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts.

22/08/2026

O-Studio founder Tim Bateman's advice is refreshingly simple.

Start with the product. Get really clear on what you're selling and the need it solves. Then have the confidence to take one step forward, and another, and back yourself to work the rest out along the way.

"You've got to be comfortable building the plane as you're learning to fly."

Get the product right, be confident, and have good people around you. That's it.

18/08/2026

"It's not that this person's smart and this person isn't."

Luke Kilworth on the real difference between people who get into business and people who don't: putting up with everything that goes wrong.

One morning he had a team of six. The next, none of them. Six months of work, gone overnight.

"Those are the refining moments."

16/08/2026

"100% it's going to happen."

Ollie Law of Fixinc, on a tsunami hitting Christchurch. He didn't hedge.

South America gives us 8–14 hours. The ridge off our own coast gives us 45 minutes — and no earthquake to feel first.

Our buildings got safer after 2011. Our tsunami planning didn't.

If your team had 45 minutes, would anyone know who makes the call?

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