It started with a flood of tears – but became a runaway New Zealand business success.
"I so wanted to be a shoe designer but I hadn't worked out how," says Kathryn Wilson. "I was out shopping with mum at Manukau City and we were sitting in the food hall discussing what I could study in NZ to have a career in footwear design.
"I was in tears because I knew I wanted to design shoes and felt an urgency to do it before anybody else started something similar in the New Zealand market."
This mother-daughter conversation, which took place nearly 20 years ago and proved an important one in Wilson's life, came to light with the release of the 2017 Suncorp New Zealand Business Success Index. It looked at what is important to New Zealand businesses, what might be holding them back, how they feel about risk and how they see themselves evolving over the next five years.
The research shows a majority of SMEs - which represent 97 per cent of New Zealand businesses - are in a positive mood, although some uncertainty existed ahead of the last election.
Suncorp New Zealand's executive general manager of customer experience, Campbell Mitchell, said: "I think there is good opportunity here to test ideas, concepts and products and then to take them out of New Zealand, take a calculated risk."
That is something Wilson, whose business decisions are always based on measured risk, is familiar with. "I didn't get into this to make a quick buck; financial rewards have always been secondary to the fact I'm doing what I love," she said.
Today her "innovative and playful" shoe brands - Kathryn Wilson and Miss Wilson - are increasingly well-known and popular with women looking for something different.
Around 12,000 shoes are made every year and sold in over 100 boutique stores throughout the country while Wilson, now 37, has become more than a designer - gaining a reputation as an influential businesswoman in demand as a speaker at business forums and conferences.
"I believe you have to remain an optimist especially when you are the leader of your team, "she said. "If you do that and have the right people and culture in your business, confidence will flow from there."
Wilson still does her own designs - with pencil and paper – and runs a lean business model employing 20 people, three retail stores in Auckland and an online store.
All her shoes are handmade and manufactured overseas in several countries including Italy, Spain, China and Turkey. Yet for all her success, her mind often goes back to that talk with her mother all those years ago.
"My mum was great, she helped me work through what I needed to do and was very encouraging; she always said I should do something I loved and to have fun doing it – choose a job you love and you never have to work a day in your life.
"It was a pivotal discussion," she said. "I have had a love of shoes from a young age and always knew this was what I wanted to do."
Enrolling in a fashion and technology course at the Auckland University of Technology at 18, she eventually graduated from Massey University with a degree in design – and her career was under way.
Wilson remembers attending a footwear industry meeting soon after graduating and telling everyone she was going to be a shoe designer: "At the time the industry was in dire straits and manufacturing was moving offshore. They told me to pick another career.
"My attitude to that was, 'Just watch me, I'm going to do this'. People telling me I couldn't do it made me more determined to succeed; I was always so certain people would buy my shoes, I had no fear of failure."
While she keeps an eye on the economic conditions both in New Zealand and globally, Wilson believes it would be crazy to let these factors stop her or bring her down.
"These things keep you on your toes," she said, "but there is no point in taking the fun out of it."
Although she says she lives, eats and breathes her job ("because my name is on the brand"), Wilson manages to strike a healthy life/work balance. She works 8.30am-5.30pm four days a week, leaving time to spend with her two-year-old daughter Lola and husband Liam.
The Suncorp New Zealand findings showed 60 per cent of business owners in New Zealand believed their own businesses were in good shape compared to 13 per cent who thought they were bad and 28 per cent who were unsure.
Almost half – 46 per cent – thought the New Zealand business environment was good, 42 per cent were unsure and just 12 per cent thought it was bad. However only 24 per cent believed the global business environment is in a healthy state (23 per cent said it was bad) with most, 54 per cent, unsure.
Suncorp CEO Paul Smeaton said the fact more businesses are optimistic about their own situation is evidence they think they can beat the odds and are relatively immune to outside influences.
#The Business Success Index forms part of Suncorp New Zealand's annual From Risk to Reward study which examines what is important to New Zealand businesses, what might be holding them back, how they feel about risk and how they see their businesses evolving over the next five years. Suncorp will reveal the 2018 Business Success Index on June 19.