Living life unleashed

He’s a successful young entrepreneur with a talent for optimising opportunities and a heart for helping youth achieve their potential. Now in his latest venture Steve Pirie’s also helping business professionals lift their performance.

Steve Pirie’s a go-getter. Not content to let opportunities come to him, he’s been chasing them down from a very young age.

Growing up, initially in the Cook Islands (his Dad worked for Air New Zealand) and then West Auckland, his high school years saw him buried in competitive sport – in particular, amateur hockey.

In order to to keep playing he negotiated his own sponsorship contract and brokered a deal to supply other players, which subsequently lead to coaching and promotional opportunities spanning seven years.

After quitting school at 15 (he was fed-up with the daily bus trek into the city), Steve made the World Cup squad for the New Zealand Under-21 Hockey team as a non-travelling reserve. It was crunch time – would he tread water or make a serious career out of hockey?

“I gave it one last shot and took up a contract to play in Europe for six months,” he says.

That experience abroad would prove to be a real eye-opener. But Steve returned to New Zealand, 19 years of age and $50k in debt.

To pay off those debts, Steve’s career took a new direction. He became a travel consultant for Flight Centre. It was the beginning of an extremely busy and exciting ten years; ten years involving travel, wellbeing, helping and inspiring others, as well as creating business opportunities. He even found time to successfully train for a private pilot’s licence.

In his first 12 months at Flight Centre, Steve was the company’s top novice consultant, selling $1.5 million worth of travel. It had its challenges – like the New Year’s Day when he had to chase a half-million dollar payment from a sports body. “That’s enough to give any 19-year-old the shakes,” he says.

In 2006, Steve and a colleague, Australian Jot Lynas, launched Unleashed Travel using an office in Sydney’s Bondi Junction. The two had met while working for tour company Top Deck.

Unleashed Travel is aimed at the thousands of Australian school leavers wanting a safe and fun alternative to holidaying on the Gold Coast during ‘Schoolie’s Week’ (when traditionally graduation parties are known to get out of hand).

Steve knew about the love affair Aussies (and Kiwis) have with the Pacific Islands – in particular Fiji. So the first year Unleashed Travel sent 350 heavily chaperoned teenagers to Beachcomber Island. It was a huge success; the popularity of the Fiji trips has never waned since.

Today, the 31-year old entrepreneur’s company sends school leavers to a number of Pacific Islands on fully pre-packaged trips, and on trips involving varying degrees of volunteer work. Numbers now exceed 3000 per year, increasing by 20 percent year on year. Europe, Southeast Asia and other destinations are planned.

To help get to stage two of its growth strategy, Unleashed Travel will ‘re-market’ to its extensive customer database.

Steve sold two businesses before the age of 30. Today he heads up three companies, including Perform Better, a fitness education platform, and Nurture Change, a retreat-style workshop for business professionals.

Unleashed Travel was named in the BRW Fast Starters across the ditch in 2011 and 2012, and the brand was launched in New Zealand in 2014 – partnering with Smokefree Rock Quest as a means of connecting with Kiwi school leavers. “Finally I have a business that’s based in New Zealand!”

Steve is also director/partner in Spirit of Sharing (SOS) – an Aussie-based not-for-profit that partners with sports distributors to donate quality sports-gear to young Fijians.
Along with all this he manages to make room for family time with wife Hayley and two children Lola and Luca.

Sounding the retreat
Steve’s latest project, Nurture Change, came about when Steve approached International Coach of the Year Zac de Silva to help manage the fast growth being experienced by Unleased Travel.

“I caught up with Zac 12 months ago and he mentioned he was thinking of taking some of his clients up to Fiji. I’d been looking for a partner to help create a retreat for business owners in the islands for some time, so it was great timing,” Steve says.

Steve had picked up on Arianna Huffington’s call for redefining business success and the fact that being connected to the business 24/7 is not her definition of success.
“I wanted to get a group of people mixing and collaborating with like-minded business owners, executives and start-up entrepreneurs in an environment that can be orchestrated to empower everybody,” explains Steve. And so Nurture Change and the “bizcation” was born.

The first bizcation, organised through Nurture Change, is scheduled for November 2015 at Fiji’s Intercontinental Resort. Guest speakers over the five days will include ex-All Blacks coach Sir Graham Henry, Xero CEO Victoria Crone, investor and entrepreneurs’ advocate Dan Khan, MedRecruit’s Sam Hazeldine, Zac de Silva and wellness guru Aaron Callaghan from Peak 40.

Steve is excited about the concept of this annual event, which will be a 50/50 mixture of education and activities. “If we combine travelling and experiencing amazing locations, and learn and collaborate at the same time, and include a follow-up accountability programme – that’s got to be pretty powerful.”

The big vision is for Nurture Change to be taken globally, utilising LinkedIn connections. Steve’s goal is to facilitate more targeted in-depth Nurture Change Challenges as well, involving 20 to 25 participants – a planned trip to Everest in October, which will involve raising funds for disaster relief in Nepal, is an example of what he has in mind.

Learn and connect
In all that he has done, Steve’s philosophy has always been to learn and connect with others. To form a triangle with two other good people. “It’s important to travel, connect and learn as much as you can. Search for those amazing people whose skills and knowledge complement what you’re good at. That’s what I’ve always done.”

He’s also learnt that gut feelings are almost always right, and it’s important to live with no regrets.

“Always wish your competition the best – because strong competition will make you better.

“Going forward, I want to give back to younger people and share my learning with them, as well as empower and help other businesses who can learn from my mistakes.”