Hot Messes, Big Visions is a podcast for the parents who are building something - a business, a career, a family, a village - while still cleaning up snack crumbs and surviving on less than four hours sleep.Hosted by Nikki Pak and Sophia Phieros, co-founders of The Village Co., each episode is an honest, unfiltered conversation about modern parenthood, identity, work, and what it actually feels like to build something real inside a real life.<hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
Hot Messes, Big Visions
Claim This Podcastby Nikki Pak, Sophia Phieros
18 episodes
Updated Daily
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Podcast Overview
Hot Messes, Big Visions is a podcast for the parents who are building something - a business, a career, a family, a village - while still cleaning up snack crumbs and surviving on less than four hours sleep.Hosted by Nikki Pak and Sophia Phieros, co-founders of The Village Co., each episode is an honest, unfiltered conversation about modern parenthood, identity, work, and what it actually feels like to build something real inside a real life.<hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
Language
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Publishing Since
7/31/2025
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Recent Episodes
June 23, 2026
Nicole Retter: Burnout Canaries, Supermum Lies and Building PAM From a Panic Attack
<p>This week we're joined by Nicole Retter, founder of PAM (Personal Admin Manager), one of New Zealand's top-ranked apps and a product built entirely from lived chaos.</p><br><p>Nicole takes us right back to the origin story: COVID, a husband who couldn't use either arm, two preschoolers, a piece of 4x2 wood wedged against a bedroom door, a panic attack, and then a concussion that gave her 12 months on the couch to figure out what she actually wanted to build.</p><br><p>In this episode we talk about:</p><p><br></p><ul><li>The mental load that never actually ends (it just changes shape at every life stage)</li><li>What "supermum" really means, and why Nicole thinks it's the most insidious thing ever invented</li><li>Burnout canaries, recognising your personal early warning signs before you hit the wall</li><li>Why she deliberately limits what AI does inside PAM, and why throwing an LLM at a problem is not a strategy</li><li>The overlap between mum mode and founder mode, and what snapping at your kids at the kitchen bench taught her about boundaries</li><li>Authentic pitching vs scripted presentations, and why cookie-cutter kills personality</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Plus Nicole's actual messy moment of the week: a logistical nightmare involving swimming pools, an Uber, a scooter, a closed Butterfly Creek, and a very sugar-hyped eight-year-old.</p><p>Find your village at: <a href="https://TheVillageCo.nz" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TheVillageCo.nz</a></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
May 14, 2026
Would You Know What To Do? Gagging, Choking, and the 2am Your Baby Turns Blue
<p>What would you actually do if your baby choked right now?</p><br><p>In this episode, we sit down with Charlotte from And Breathe First Aid, a paediatric ICU nurse with over a decade of experience and the founder of NZ's only parent-specific first aid education. We talk about the gap between knowing first aid and actually being able to act in a crisis, why choking is less common than you think (and what to do when it does happen), and the one stat about CPR that stopped us both in our tracks.</p><br><p>We cover:</p><ul><li>The difference between gagging and choking, and the one question to ask yourself</li><li>Why baby CPR is nothing like what you learned in a workplace course</li><li>Febrile seizures: what they are, how common they are, and why no one talks about it</li><li>How to stay calm when it's your own child</li><li>The free Baby CPR mini course you can do right now from your couch</li></ul><p><br></p><p>Charlotte also shares the story of her own daughter going blue at 2am, which is equal parts terrifying and reassuring.</p><br><p>Free Baby CPR Mini Course: <a href="https://www.andbreathefirstaid.co.nz/pages/baby-cpr-mini-course" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.andbreathefirstaid.co.nz/pages/baby-cpr-mini-course</a></p><p>Find your village at: <a href="https://TheVillageCo.nz" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TheVillageCo.nz</a></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
May 8, 2026
The Messy Middle
<p>Nobody talks about the bit in between. Not the exciting launch, not the "we made it" moment. Just the long, unglamorous stretch where you're building something real while running on broken sleep and blind faith. That's where Nikki and Sophia are right now, and this episode they're not pretending otherwise.</p><br><p>From midnight wake-ups and toddlers who insist on driving the car, to turning 41 wondering if you have your life together, to that very specific startup feeling of being so close and so far at the same time, this one's for anyone in the thick of it.</p><br><p>Because parenting and building a business? Turns out they're not that different. It's the same stubbornness, the same "I can't quit now," the same slow, hard, beautiful progress you almost miss while you're living it.</p><br><p>If you've been waiting for someone to say "same" instead of "here's how I scaled to seven figures by Thursday," pull up a seat.</p><br><p><strong>In this episode:</strong></p><p><br></p><ul><li>Messy moments: poster frights, car-seat standoffs, and the 3am guilt spiral</li><li>Why you never hear about the middle of the story</li><li>Turning 41 mid-startup and questioning everything (briefly)</li><li>"This too shall pass" and why we actually believe it</li><li>Building The Village Co., their fifth baby</li></ul><p>Find your village at: <a href="https://TheVillageCo.nz" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TheVillageCo.nz</a></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>
18 total episodes available
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This podcast updates daily.
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