Episode Details

Lisa King had a goal from the very first day of Eat My Lunch: the business would be a success the day it became unnecessary.

She built it in 2015 to solve a problem she couldn't stop thinking about, kids going hungry at school in a country of abundance. By week 12 she was making 2,000 lunches a day out of her own kitchen. At peak, nearly 5,000, with police officers, politicians, and grannies in their sixties all buttering bread before sunrise. Then the government launched its own school lunch program, and Lisa did something most founders never do. She closed the business on purpose.

Before that happened, a media story accused her of personally profiting off hungry kids, at a time when she was being paid less than she'd ever earned. She had to show a reporter her payslip to prove it. We talk through what that period actually felt like, what New Zealand's tall poppy syndrome did to her willingness to talk to press afterward, and the identity crisis of letting go of a business that had defined her for five years.

We get into:

• How Eat My Lunch scaled from 50 to nearly 5,000 lunches a day
• The media smear and what it actually cost her personally
• Why she built the business to make itself redundant from day one
• What closing your first business does to your sense of who you are

If you're building something with real purpose behind it, or wondering what it takes to walk away from your own success on your own terms, this one's worth your time.