Recognised as one of the world’s top innovators under 25, Kate Gatfield-Jeffries launched women’s wellness brand Moodi at just 22. Five years on, she’s been named New Zealand’s EY Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and Moodi has become the country’s #1 selling wellness drink. Kate sat down with Ryan Bridge to discuss building a category-leading brand, backing big ideas, and the lessons she’s learned along the way.

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Bridge talks Business: 12 May 2026
Episode Transcript

Ryan Bridge
Kia ora and welcome to Episode 75 of Bridge talks Business with Milford. If you’re one of the growing number of young people not in work, education or training, or perhaps you’re in work in a corporate job, but feel like you’re not doing what you love or making a difference, this episode is for you. Our guest today was offered all of the above and turned them down to start a business, a brand. And now not even aged 30 is leading one of the fastest growing wellness juggernauts in Australasia. First, here’s your top five business bits.

    1. A solid boost to April jobs in the US with the release of non-farm payrolls. Despite headline strength, some of the detail was softer with the unemployment rate, for example, increasing modestly and wages coming in softer. However, this reading still shows improvement compared to where the US labour market was just a couple of months ago.
    2. Markets are watching Starmer drama closely with a growing number of MPs and now a cabinet minister backing calls for the British PM to step aside. Follows big losses for labour in local elections where reform outperformed.
    3. New Zealand labour market data was released last week showing ongoing softness. The unemployment rate did fall modestly, but this was largely a function of a decline in participation. Employment growth was weak. Wages remain quite soft.
    4. The RBA hiked rates last week in response to lingering inflation risks, but gave a more subdued message on the outlook for the Australian economy. Tightening of monetary policy is now expected to weigh more heavily on consumption, which should help to minimise second-round effects from the current energy shock.
    5. This week the focus is on the Australian budget where news sources have cited changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing.

We talk a lot on this podcast about wealth, about creating wealth, about ensuring that you’ve got enough to live on once you retire. What about creating something completely from scratch? A whole new business, a whole new brand, a whole new enterprise. That’s exactly what Kate Gatland-Jeffries did, co-founder of Moodi, one of Australasia’s fastest growing wellness brands. She’s here to talk to us today and just a reminder, this segment is informational only and should not be considered financial advice. Kate, welcome to the podcast.

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Pleasure to be here.

Ryan Bridge
Very excited to learn more about Moodi this morning. As a male consumer, I have to say. I haven’t personally made a purchase, though I am very much looking forward to potentially winning the Range Rover that you’ve got on offer at the moment.

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Yes, you and half of the women in New Zealand.

Ryan Bridge
Tell us about Moodi. When did you start the business?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
So, I started the business around four years ago. To take you back to that moment, like I was actually a law and business student. So fairly early on in my career, thought I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I should go down the corporate route first, get a bit of experience, build a network, earn some money, et cetera. And I realised I had this idea for what would eventually become Moodi to help women feel their best through delicious, enjoyable, crave-worthy products. And I thought, why put that dream on hold when I could do it now. So here I am.

Ryan Bridge
Which is an amazing, a very sort of powerful thing to do – because you were being offered jobs, graduate jobs were coming at you after law school. What was it, do you think, that made you actually cross the line and say, “I’m gonna go out on my own”?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
I know, it’s such a hard thing. And I talk to founders today, and I think taking that first step sometimes is the hardest step to take. For me, it was really that passion. Like I felt so strongly about the mission that I had, which was to elevate women. I was doing a lot of that in law school, business school, through sort of programmes to help women in their careers. But what I saw with those women is a lot of them were like very stressed, very burnt out, struggling with sleep, struggling with gut health. And I thought, you know, no one can reach their full potential if they’re not feeling good. And I have this idea of something that can really help them to get there. So I think you put aside your own fears and insecurities and concerns, and you go all in based on that passion that you have.

Ryan Bridge
The gut health thing is massive now. I mean, you can’t go anywhere without hearing about it. Wellness, the industry is blowing up. Was there like a product that you had in mind, a specific product or was it an idea and you then went and researched and came up with a bunch of products?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
I think it’s a combination of all of those things. So at that time, the wellness industry was very focused on appearance, anti-aging, weight loss. It was the boom of collagen. And I was seeing all these protein powder brands with, you know, women in bikinis, with protein shakers on the beach. And I thought a lot of the women in my life don’t necessarily resonate with that. So the first concept was how do I create a protein powder that is going to support how you feel, not how you look. So with, you know, functional ingredients and adaptogens that support things like sleep, stress, mood, and then from there it really evolved. Like as you mentioned, gut health is absolutely taking off around the world. So we then went into that, but we did it from our own unique angle, which is targeting the gut brain connection. So yeah, I think you just sort of start in one place and it iterates and evolves from there based on what your customer’s needs are.

Ryan Bridge
Right, talk to us about how the business is going. Staff, volume, sales, how are you looking?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
We’re one of the fastest growing, largest women’s wellness brands in Australasia, which is pretty cool to be there, you know, three years since starting the business. Sold millions of servings of our product. We’re now the number one wellness drink in New Zealand. So we launched these products into retail about a year and a half ago. Sold millions of cans.

Ryan Bridge
Amazing.

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Yes – 60% market share. Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of exciting opportunities for us to continue to grow, but have built a really strong foundation in the ANZ market.

Ryan Bridge
Can I ask how old you are?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
I’m 27.

Ryan Bridge
How do you find, you know, you’ve got staff, obviously to make this happen, you’ve got very, I’m sure complicated sales between online and retail. You’ve also got new products that you’re bringing to market. How complicated is it? And how do you find dealing with all of those things at a relatively young age?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
So Moodi’s my first full-time job. And it’s, yeah, it’s an interesting situation to be in. You know, you look around the room and you’re the youngest person in the room, but you’re also the one that everyone’s looking up to to count on, you know, to make the decisions and make the hard calls. I think for me, you know, you grow so quickly when you’re in the driver’s seat of a business like this. There’s no escaping it. You’re having to make hard decisions. You’re having to learn, upskill, evolve very quickly based on what the business’s needs are. Like I once heard this expression, you know, the business can only grow as fast as you grow as a founder. So I really don’t want to become the bottleneck for the business. And I’ve had to really intentionally upskill and develop to ensure that that doesn’t happen.

Ryan Bridge
Is it stressful?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
It is stressful, but I’m in a great industry. I take a lot of my own product. I’m a super user. It is, but I think it’s all relative, right? And I think most founders, you know, you adopt that mindset of strong resilience and it’s just one chapter of the business at a time. And every chapter’s got its own challenges and opportunities.

Ryan Bridge
What would you say is the biggest lesson that you’ve learned or that you’ve been taught by being a founder and running the business?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
I love to say innovate or die. And I know it sounds extreme, but I think for us now, you know, we’re at the top of our game in a lot of the fields that we’re playing in. And that is not a reason to be complacent or to slow down. It’s like you have to constantly be pushing the envelope. What can be better, you know, more efficient, more innovative, serve the customer and meet their needs, you know, even more than you were before. And so I think it’s important to not ever get complacent, even when you are winning.

Ryan Bridge
How do you advertise? What’s your model like? Do you use a lot of influencers? I know there’s a lot of, particularly younger people, younger women using TikTok, social media, stuff like that. What’s your strategy?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
We have one in 20 New Zealand women taking our products online, which means to reach that many women, you know, we’re pretty mass, pretty broad. You have to be in lots of different touch points. So we are one of the top Meta advertisers in Australia and New Zealand in terms of ad spend. So we have an entire team, you know, dedicated to making great performance creative in-house, which is an art and a science in itself. We do out of home, you know, there’s buses, billboards, radio, all the things you have to be, yeah, getting all those touch points.

Ryan Bridge
Do you have specific goals as a business leader that you, you know, quarterly, annually, that your targets you’re wanting to hit? And how do you come up with those? How do you make sure that you’re growing, your, I suppose, horizon is growing, so the business grows with it?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
It’s almost a shift in goalpost mentality, right? Like the business has grown 300% year on year. If you asked me three years ago, where would I be today? You know, possibly wouldn’t have picked where we are. But I think it’s key that when you are having that success, you readjust what your expectations are. So typically, you know, I set a very ambitious North Star. You know, for Moodi, I want us to be the biggest in the world at what we do by a certain date. And I’ve told the team that everyone knows, and then we work backwards. We have very clear stage gates, timelines, objectives, key results, what does that look like? And it all ladders up to that sort of big ambition.

Ryan Bridge
What’s the date?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
2030.

Ryan Bridge
Really?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
It snuck up on me – so we’re heading to North America in October, launching in that market, yeah. Nailed ANZ, but there’s a few others we’ve got to tick off to be the biggest in the Western world.

Ryan Bridge
When did you set the 2030 date?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
When I started the business.

Ryan Bridge
How is it going?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Well, good. I mean, we’re nailing it in this market in Australia, but yeah, there’s a lot of other markets that we’re going to have to tackle.

Ryan Bridge
What’s the biggest barrier getting into North America?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
It’s an interesting market. I think people always say, “Just because they speak English in America, it doesn’t mean it’s the same culture”. And I think that’s such a good point. You have to think of it as, you know, lots of different states, subcultures. You can’t just have one sort of rinse and repeat strategy just because it worked here, it’s going to work there. So I think it’s being really targeted in how we’re going about that. Like what is the price pack architecture? What is the messaging? What is the branding? Who are we partnering with? What is the story that we’re telling? And, you know, being still authentic to the brand and our values, but tailoring it for that market.

Ryan Bridge
I think a lot of people think, “Oh, you just get a Kardashian on board in your home and hosed”. Is there some truth in that kind of thing?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Maybe. I mean, that hasn’t been our strategy to date, and it probably won’t be But I think influencer advertising is really, really powerful if you have the right sort of brand alignment and fit with that person. But for us, I think we can do it potentially without a partner like that.

Ryan Bridge
If anyone can do it, I have every confidence it’s you, Kate. Tell us about the Moodi Female Founder Fund.

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Yeah, so we’re giving away $15,000 to female founders across New Zealand and Australia this year. We did a pilot last year, got thousands of applicants in a very short space of time. I think there is a huge need for no-strings-attached cash funding at that sort of early stage of a business. You know, for many women founders, it is the difference between them going all in. And we do this grant. I say they can spend it on anything, you know, childcare, inventory, marketing, anything that they need to get them to that next level. And I actually won a grant in the early years of Moodi. I won $10,000 and that funded the inventory that actually got us to where we are today. So, you know, it’s my way of continuing to give back to the community.

Ryan Bridge
As a person, as an individual, has starting a business, running a business changed you in any way?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Absolutely. I think it’s the hardest, most challenging, but also most rewarding path that you can walk, you know, in a career. It’s so intense. You are learning every lesson, you know, and you’re dealing with the upside of your decisions and the downside of your decisions. And every day is full of opportunities and challenges. But I think you grow a lot as a person.

Ryan Bridge
Do you actually kind of feel like you’re alive every day?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Sometimes. Sometimes you feel pretty tired and like you’re not very alive. But for the most part, it’s pretty thrilling.

Ryan Bridge
Because I think a lot of people who are in corporate jobs and I’ve interviewed people before who say that they’ve always kind of wanted to do exactly what it is that you’re talking about. They’ve had this dream, they’ve had this vision, they’ve had this goal. But actually making that leap is the most difficult thing to do. And once you’re there, it kind of seems like this euphoric, amazing place to be.

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Totally. I think a lot of people are quite risk averse, right? Like they actually might have a great idea and they’ve got the skills and knowledge and connections to go and execute on that. You actually don’t need a lot of capital depending on what it is. Like I bootstrapped Moodi to this day. We’ve had no loans, no external investment. You know, I own the entire business. So it is possible. It’s hard, but it’s very rewarding. And I think when people get comfortable with taking that risk, that’s where you get the upside and the opportunity.

Ryan Bridge
Also means you must have to be very deliberate about what products you’re investing in because they need to work.

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Totally. In the early days, it’s like if I had a swing at goal, it better be going in the goal. Yeah.

Ryan Bridge
Now, just finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention your EY Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Congratulations.

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Thank you.

Ryan Bridge
How does that feel?

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
It’s funny because as a founder, you don’t typically slow down and reflect on everything that you’ve achieved. You’re always looking at the next thing, there’s always fires that you have to fight. So I think it was a really nice moment in time to actually look back and be proud of what I’ve achieved.

Ryan Bridge
Well, there is a hell of a lot to be proud of and more to be proud of, too, when you take over the world in three years’ time. Yeah. Kate, lovely to have you on the podcast. Thank you.

Kate Gatfield-Jeffries
Thank you.

That was Kate Gatland Jeffries, co-founder of Moodi, which is one of Australasia’s fastest growing wellness brands. Great to have her on the podcast this week. I look forward to seeing you next week. Don’t forget you can like, follow and subscribe to this podcast wherever you like to listen. Until next week, don’t forget, invest in yourselves.