Nicky Sayers Founder of Your Health NZ is a Wintec Alumni who has worked in various roles, both in hospitals and the community, in New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

Nicky is a nurse by trade, but has now found the perfect blend of nursing and entrepreneurship.

After spending three years working in various emergency and cardiac units in Bath, London and Oxford in the United Kingdom. Nicky quickly realised just how different the New Zealand health system was compared to the rest of the world.

“In the time a patient in the UK hospital would wait for surgery, we could have flown them to New Zealand, they could have had their surgery, recovered, and flown back to the UK.

“It made me really appreciate our health system in New Zealand.”

Nicky used the UK as a base to travel throughout Europe before returning to New Zealand. On her return, she did her postgraduate diploma in clinical teaching and advanced nursing at Auckland University.

In 2016, Nicky spent some time going solo in the bush for Outward Bound, where she began to rediscover her values and what was important in her life.

This experience led her to the journey of entrepreneurship. That has since led her to the creation of Your Health NZ and to the Soda Inc. CO.STARTERS programme.

“I came home from Outward Bound and launched myself into my first flu season, and I have just finished my fourth.”

Your Health NZ provides nursing services for both businesses, schools, teams and individuals. This covers nursing education, flu vaccines, relief or contract nursing, health promotion displays and creating health and nursing policies and procedures for any workplaces. For example, you may run a plumbing business and need a policy on Hepatitis B for your staff.

“Lots of the businesses, schools and workplaces that I work for I’m contracted to. I come in purely based on that piece of nursing work, whatever that may be, sometimes it is covering a shift and seeing patients, other days it is project work. The variety keeps it interesting.

The creation of Your Health NZ has given Nicky the flexibility of work, as well as enabled her to give up the shift work of emergency nursing.

Nicky’s work has primarily been throughout the flu season and the winter months, when sicknesses are easily spread, but now that additional services are being offered, the workload will be spread throughout the year.

“To be honest, the first two seasons at Your Health NZ were so busy that by the end of that flu season I actually didn’t want to know anything about the flu, I just wanted to park it and put it all in the corner.”

“But going into this last flu season, I thought by the end of this season I will know if this business is worth continuing, and I actually really enjoyed the season.”

Nicky found out about our CO.STARTERS programme during her fourth flu season as Your Health NZ and was a valued member of Soda’s first cohort.

CO.STARTERS is a 9 week programme, hosted by Soda, which is aimed to help courageous entrepreneurs turn their bright business ideas into a reality by teaching them the basics of business in a supportive environment.

“Throughout the eight classes, the bits that I had to particularly get my head around was business structures, and the money side of things. Being a nurse throughout my career meant that I had not necessarily learnt what I needed to know to run a business, so the financial aspect was somewhat challenging

“Through doing CO.STARTERS I now realise that the business isn’t just about meeting my needs and values, but more so about meeting the needs of the customer.”

Throughout this CO.STARTER’s journey, Nicky truly learnt how she could provide the utmost value to the customer and has realised her strengths. This has since led her to realise that Your Health NZ is worth continuing and that the future will be bright.

“I came through this flu season, and it went really well. I understand where I am at now, and where I will go moving forward, and I can see that this is really going to work.

“Out of the course I set myself 30, 60, and 90-day goals.”

Nicky has since quit her job and is now focusing solely on the progression of Your Health NZ.