EP 018: Nicole Retter: Burnout Canaries, Supermum Lies and Building PAM From a Panic Attack
Hot Messes, Big VisionsShow Notes
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.
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.
In this episode we talk about:
The mental load that never actually ends (it just changes shape at every life stage) What "supermum" really means, and why Nicole thinks it's the most insidious thing ever invented Burnout canaries, recognising your personal early warning signs before you hit the wall Why she deliberately limits what AI does inside PAM, and why throwing an LLM at a problem is not a strategy The overlap between mum mode and founder mode, and what snapping at your kids at the kitchen bench taught her about boundaries Authentic pitching vs scripted presentations, and why cookie-cutter kills personality
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. Find your village at: TheVillageCo.nz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Hot Messes, Big Visions
We finally got Jacqlin Richards on the pod and she did not hold back. Parenting Alchemist. Award-winning educator. Author of the best book title we have ever heard: F*ck Up Your Kids with Grace & Humour. Jacqlin used to be the fun police, the sugar police, the screen police. Blow-drying her hair before a run. Holding it all together while falling apart behind closed doors. Now she actually enjoys her kids, and in this episode she tells us exactly what changed. We talk about: ✨ the perfection trap and why it keeps mums isolated ✨ the love languages exercise her whole family did (steal this one) ✨ why losing your sh*t isn't the problem, the repair is what counts ✨ screens, fear, and getting your kids' buy-in instead of policing them Her book hits Amazon on 28 July and there are a handful of signed pre-order copies left. Pre-order also gets you free access to her live workshop series. Link in bio, or head to jacqlinrichards.com/preorder. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Then share it with your village 💛 @jacqlinrichards #HotMessesBigVisions #ParentingPodcast #NZPodcast #RealParenting #MumLife #TheVillageCo Find your village at: TheVillageCo.nz Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
What would you actually do if your baby choked right now?
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.
Renata Wiles is the founder of ROAM with Kids, an app that helps NZ parents find places to go with their kids, complete with parent reviews, age-based filters, and local events.
This week nearly broke us. Between daycare chaos, burnout, building a business with two young kids, and trying to hold it all together… something had to change.