I've spent ten years building brands: other people's, then my own. This is the honest version. The bedroom floor, the first two sales, the launches that flopped. Everything I've learnt, written down in here.

At school I was insecure about my teeth, so I bought every whitening kit I could find on Instagram (sometimes on Mum's credit card).

Years later I was the agency guy, growing other people's brands and always wondering what I could do with no client holding the ideas back.

I'd already built a service business, and services are always capped by your time. I wanted to make something that could scale past me.

So while we were running Kollab, I rented a desk at my mentor's agency and started designing the kit I'd always wanted.

We sourced through Alibaba, researched ingredients and formulas from scratch, and tried every sample ourselves. One supplier stood out: Kinson. Kinson's still our supplier today.

Within a month of launching, customers had told us everything we wanted to change.

We didn't know it'd be them, and I adore that it was.

Then a creator posted about us for the first time and we sold about 80 kits in one weekend. It was the first time I'd heard the sales ding go off like that. I honestly thought, "this is my job now."

We packed in our apartment, then at Kollab, where every staff member, friend and family member helped at some point. In COVID we moved it back home: Oli and me on the floor of the second bedroom, with the bed tipped up against the wall.

Seeing every name and every address, out to the edges of New Zealand, is when I started taking it seriously.

I thought it would sell faster. I tried to perfect a product that was always going to change anyway. And I expected the stock to just… come back.

We sold through slowly, and by the time we needed more, we couldn't afford it.

Kollab was my first agency, back in 2017. I launched it and scaled it as a social media agency, but I just couldn't make it profitable. So in 2021 we merged with Glass Elephant, and I became creative director, cutting my teeth on global clients, around 80 of them at any given time. I learnt how to lead a big team, including the hard parts like redundancies.

Glass Elephant eventually got stripped back and diluted. That taught me a lot too, and it led me to start my third and final agency, Kontent & Co, in 2023.

Three agencies, and the chance to learn basically every industry: farming, gaming, fashion, sports supplements, e-bikes, everything under the sun. And it always comes down to the same thing: making people feel something about what you're selling.

• The Whitening Co: the training wheels. It's failed the most, so it's furthest ahead.
• Kollection: print-on-demand art from my photography. A lockdown project with Oli, and his first time on Shopify. Paused, not closed.
• Habitual Skin → DuoGen: skincare I built at Glass Elephant, from brand to formulations, and launched in the UK. Then a global trademark dispute forced a rebrand.
• twnty5: a meal-replacement brand. I came in as creative director for a new name, identity and values, and sold it online. Around six years old, and closing down this year.
• NADA: the next one. More on the last page.

Still a shareholder in every one.

I came fifth in the one and only season of The Apprentice Aotearoa. My exit line was "One of you is being fired because you're already the real deal… Kennedy, you're fired."

I didn't place, but I felt like I won. The connections and the new agency clients made more than the prize pool, and I stopped being "the agency man" and became the Whitening Co guy.

Oli and I remortgaged our house twice to buy out every other shareholder in The Whitening Co, about half a million dollars. That's what solidified it for us. It was ours now, and we both leaned all the way in. That's when Oli properly joined the business.

Along the way, moments like opening our studios helped too. They made it feel like a real brand, something worth growing.

We launched the Platinum range: the kit and pens first, then the strips a couple of months later. Every year of getting it half wrong went into it.

It was the first time it felt like a complete product we'd built from the ground up. Everything kicked into gear from there.

• Last Black Friday I sent the launch email with Smart Sending on. It reached about 2% of the list on day one.
• In Bali we sold out of our hero strips, and there wasn't the cash to restock.
• We found out at 8pm the night before that we were going into Life Pharmacy.
• Expos with no gift bags. Staff not turning up.

More disasters than not. Then every now and then you win an award and it all feels worth it.

• 30,000+ customers
• Viva Beauty Awards 2026: Breakthrough Brand of the Year + People's Choice
• 2degrees Auckland Business Awards 2026 finalist: People's Choice + Excellence in Marketing
• Stocked in Life Pharmacy + Unichem (Green Cross Health) and The Cosmetic Clinic, with Teeth by Tony as our dentist ambassador
• NZ Herald, plus plenty of podcasts
• Multiple $100k+ months

People I've helped along the way: Jenna · Morgaine & Martin (Evolve Creations) · Mishaela (Creative Mish) · Pamu Jewelry · By Hoshi

Eight years ago it was a rented desk, a laptop and a supplier off Alibaba. Now The Whitening Co is New Zealand's leading teeth whitening brand: 30,000+ customers, on the shelves of Life Pharmacy and Unichem nationwide, two Viva Beauty Awards and multiple $100k+ months. Next up is NADA, our first FMCG brand, built in public.

None of it was luck. It was trial, error and writing everything down. That's what Groundwork is: everything I've learnt, in the order it actually matters.

If there's a product you can't stop thinking about, this is your sign. Applications open soon by expression of interest. It's a small group, chosen rather than first come, first served, and the people who come in early get the most of my time.