Miria Flavell 
Founder and CEO, HINE Ltd, Activewear, Hamilton 

Kim: I’ve worked with Miria at every level of the business since 2018 – strategically unpacking each facet of her organisation to anchor a winning vision. 

As Māori we go into business with an intergenerational lens, always improving our whanau and I applied my “whole person” approach to assist Miria gain clarity on her business and personal goals.

As they are intertwined, achieving balance between the two is the most effective. Miria understands how this interconnectedness makes the business more successful and productive.

We worked on her personal aspirations as well as manufacturing challenges, protecting her intellectual property rights, restructuring roles, integrating revenue models for pricing, negotiating her commercial lease and refining her target audience.

Layer by layer we were able to unlock the importance of ‘telling her story’.  We worked to establish best practices, build her brand knowledge and leadership skills and develop an organisational structure for a rapid growing business. 

I am proud to have been a driver of her business literacy and to be involved as a high-level advisor. It’s exciting to work with a young Māori wāhine entrepreneur who keeps pushing herself and developing her skills and I have remained agile to support her.

Miria is also a good example of how I am able to connect businesses to my network of established relationships with professional advisors to save them money. Miria switched accountants and connected with a lawyer based on my recommendation because she values my expertise and included me in the key conversations. 

We have achieved great results because we have built a trusted relationship over time and Miria knows I am invested in her success. 

Miria: I really connected with Kim straight away and felt I could trust her. At that time, it was just me running the business, and I knew I needed help to get to the next level and grow – I just didn’t know how to do it myself. 

She just wants the best for you, and she wants the best for your business, and that’s why she’ll hammer you until you achieve whatever it is you set out to achieve because she knows how important all our personal business goals are. I probably wouldn't have been able to believe in myself as much if it wasn't for Kim.

Kim connected me with the people that I needed in order to grow to the next level, whether it was financial advice – she connected me with my current accountant who’s been with me from the start – marketing, getting my brand out there, but also to have that mentor who was just going to be there for anything I needed. 

Everyone that I have now; my lawyer, accountant, and so on, is from Kim. She put me in touch with the best people she knew to help grow the business. Kim even brought in an HR person to help us with our restructuring, clarifying every single person’s role so we could fill in the necessary gaps.

She also came in to do strategic work with my staff members around learning to work as a team and how to use communication as a workplace benefit – learning how to never stamp on anyone’s integrity and how to speak on the same level.   

And it speaks for itself that I have had Kim right next to me from the very beginning, helping me and guiding the team when we need her. The great thing about Kim is that having her in the business has built into a friendship – even around advice on my personal life – that's the level of friendship we have now.

We’re now operating at a much bigger scale, and Kim is always the person I call for advice and support. If there’s a decision that I need to make within the business as CEO, I’ll run it past her to get her thoughts. Usually it will be, ‘What do you think about this scenario?’ and ‘How should I approach this?’ That’s how much I trust her and what she means to me. 

Kim gives me a good, clear vision of where I had to go, what success looks like and how to ensure that my actions and tactics are going to get me there. It’s a constant education.

It’s not just “business” for Kim – she genuinely cares about every single one of her clients. I know this because she'll talk to me about them as is if they were friends of hers. That’s the type of person she is. She hypes them up and talks big about them and all the new things that they’re doing.

That’s the real difference. It’s easy for people to connect with her, and she’s part of our team – everyone calls her ‘Auntie Kim’, here!