Welcome to my new column, Pretty Interesting! Capsule has given me the opportunity to write about some truly epic humans I have met who march to the beat of their own drum and who have genuinely inspired me recently.
I feel oddly proud that I have mended my algorithm enough to no longer be force-fed a constant stream of negative news and collective trauma when I scroll. There is a privilege in protecting your mental health this way, even if it means remaining a little ignorant to certain things. And yet, if I am honest, a lot of feel good stories can lack the punch to really hold my attention. There is a strange duality in wanting something juicy and compelling without feeling like you are reading a glossy puff piece.
This column is my attempt to sit right in that tension – human, honest and a little sharp around the edges.
You can read previous columns – a chat with Kiwi writer/director Taylor Nixon, restauranter, Michael Dearth, writer/director Rachel Ross, my own mum, Jill Arkley, Toni Anne Glover, who is one of the geniuses behind the Kinloch Wilderness Retreat, entrepreneur, Nyssa Waters and author of F*ck Up Your Kids with Grace & Humour: The Truth About Parenting, Jacqlin Richards.
This week I talk to a woman I’ve looked up to my entire life – Rochelle Moffitt.
It probably feels a little like nepotism is alive and well that I’ve chosen to interview my sister.
Trust me, I considered that.
Pretty Interesting was created because I’ve always been fascinated by people. Not necessarily the loudest people, or the most famous, but the ones who quietly change the trajectory of everyone lucky enough to know them. The people who leave you thinking differently after a conversation. The people who make you want to be a little braver, a little kinder, a little more yourself.
I know a lot of those people.
One of them just happens to be my sister.
I’ve been noticing something lately. Whether it’s the weight of winter, the relentless news cycle, the pressure so many families are carrying or simply the pace of modern life, it feels like a lot of us are moving through the world with our shoulders a little tighter than usual. There is a heaviness I’ve struggled to put my finger on, and every time I think about who I’d want to sit across from in moments like these, I always come back to Rochelle.
Not because she has all the answers.
Not because she’s immune to hardship.
But because she has made a conscious decision about how she wants to meet life.
I’ve watched her do it for decades… well 3 and a bit decades but I think that’s a pretty good sample size.
Being Rochelle’s younger sister has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. I don’t say that because she’s successful, although she is. I don’t say it because she’s built businesses or communities or spends her days encouraging people to dream bigger. I say it because living in close proximity to someone like Rochelle changes you. Her words have quietly become the soundtrack in my own head. Sometimes I’ll find myself facing something uncomfortable and realise I’m borrowing one of her mantras without even thinking about it. If there’s a fun way to do something, she’ll find it. If everyone else is worrying about why something won’t work, she’s already set up a new business or idea to solve the problem. She has never seemed particularly interested in waiting for permission to become the fullest version of herself, something that I think is very rare!
Perhaps that’s why people are drawn to her like a magnet. When you are in her ora, your life gets significantly better. She is a connector, someone who doesn’t subscribe to scarcity mindset and who is intoxicating to be around in the very best way.
Or perhaps it’s why somebody once described Rochelle as someone who leaves “a trail of glitter wherever she goes.”
I’ve loved that description ever since I first heard it because, while it sounds playful, it somehow captures something much more profound. Glitter doesn’t politely stay where it’s placed. It has an annoying habit of turning up days later in places you didn’t even know it had reached. Rochelle’s impact feels remarkably similar. Long after a conversation has ended, people are still quoting her. They’re still talking about an idea she shared, a perspective she challenged or a sentence she said so casually that she probably doesn’t even remember saying it herself.
When I ask her about the glitter, she laughs immediately.
“I think it’s positive energy,” she says. “They just didn’t have a visual for that, so I’ll take glitter.”
Then, because this is Rochelle, she starts unpacking the metaphor.
“To me, glitter is happy, playful, a little rebellious about where it lands and how it sticks. It’s a glimmer of sparkle and joy.”
She pauses before adding, “I encourage everyone to be glitter… the good-for-the-environment kind, of course.”
That last sentence makes me laugh because it is so unmistakably her. Rochelle has this wonderful ability to hold two things at once. She is deeply thoughtful without becoming heavy. Optimistic without becoming naïve. She can speak about courage and purpose in one breath and make a joke in the next. It means that even when she’s talking about serious things, you somehow leave feeling lighter. MAGIC!
It would be easy to assume someone like Rochelle simply arrived in the world wired this way, but as we continue talking, it becomes obvious that her optimism isn’t accidental. It is something she’s chosen to nurture over and over again. And I will add its only now that I am actually asking her about it in a more formal way that I am learning about the how and why too!
She tells me she was lucky enough to grow up with two hardworking, optimistic parents, and I don’t doubt that had an enormous influence. (we have the same mum and different dads) But when I ask where her outlook really comes from, she unexpectedly tells me a story about a number plate.
She was around eleven or twelve when she noticed that a family friend, Kevin Giles, had “PMA” on his car.
“I asked him what it meant,” she remembers. “He said, ‘Positive Mental Attitude.’ I freaking loved that.”
It’s funny how certain moments lodge themselves in your memory. A conversation that lasts less than a minute somehow becomes part of the architecture of your life.
Decades later, Rochelle still comes back to that idea.
“No matter what shit comes your way,” she says, “you get to choose how you take it, deal with it and what you do with it.”
There is something refreshingly uncomplicated about the way she says it. Not simplistic. Not dismissive of pain. Just grounded in the belief that while we don’t always choose what happens to us, we do have some say in what happens next.
“I’m not saying it’s always easy to be positive,” she continues. “But I’d rather look for the good in the hard stuff and work my way through it than be a negative Nelly.”
As her younger sister, I can tell you this isn’t something she only says when someone points a microphone at her. This is how she has always lived.
Some people rehearse motivational quotes.
Rochelle quietly rehearses perspective I believe.
One of the things people often say about Rochelle is that she’s a “yes person.” She seems to have an extraordinary capacity to throw herself into opportunities, adventures and ideas that most of us would spend months overthinking. I used to think that was simply who she was.
She tells me it wasn’t.
Meeting her partner Kelsey, changed something.
“He has the most adventurous, wonderful outlook on life,” she says. “Now, ninety-nine percent of the time you’ll get a yes from me if it’s going to bring adventure, joy, fun, love and memories.”
I love that answer, but what I love even more is what comes next.
“I’ve also got really good at saying no.”
That catches me off guard because it isn’t how most people think about courage. We tend to imagine courageous people saying yes to everything. Rochelle sees it differently.
She explains that there are opportunities she deliberately turns down because every yes is also a no to something else. Protecting her time means protecting the life she’s trying to build.
Listening to her, I realise that what looks spontaneous from the outside is actually incredibly intentional. Sneaky, brilliant.
The same is true of confidence. If you spend five minutes around Rochelle, you’d probably assume she’s always been confident. She’ll happily wear sequins to a business event if she feels like it. She’ll dance before anyone else has stood up. She’ll strike up conversations with complete strangers as though they’ve known each other for years.
But confidence, she insists, came afterwards.
“It comes from action,” she tells me. “You have to start somewhere, and most of the time it’s not from confidence. It’s from believing you can give something a go, being prepared to be shit at it, and practicing and learning for a while.”
I smile because there it is again.
Permission.
Or rather, the complete absence of needing it. I have to pause because I love permission and need it… how did two sisters have such a different experience is beyond me.
She isn’t waiting to become fearless before she begins. She’s simply beginning.
Maybe that’s what I’ve admired all along. Not that she isn’t scared. That she refuses to let fear have the casting vote.
There is another reason I think people are drawn to Rochelle, and it has very little to do with her optimism.
She tells the truth.
Not the polished, carefully curated version of life we have become so accustomed to seeing online, but the uncomfortable, deeply human version. Rochelle has never hidden the fact that life hasn’t always unfolded the way she imagined it would. She speaks openly about navigating two divorces, about the heartbreak of having to begin again, and about rebuilding a life that looked nothing like the one she had carefully planned. For some people those experiences become chapters they quietly tuck away. Rochelle has chosen to leave the pages open, believing that if her story can make someone else feel less alone, then it is worth telling.
I think that’s why so many women trust her.
She doesn’t stand on a stage pretending she’s got life all figured out. She stands there as someone who has been knocked down, found herself wondering what comes next, and chosen to get back up anyway. There is something incredibly powerful about hearing someone admit that they’ve had to start over more than once and discovering they aren’t embarrassed by it. Instead, she speaks about those seasons with gratitude, because every beginning again taught her something she couldn’t have learnt any other way. She also always credits our Nana Joan and our Mum Jill and our Aunty Sue for being badass and choosing kindness always even through hardships.
Over the years I’ve watched women gravitate towards Rochelle, not because she promises them an easier life, but because she quietly reminds them that they are capable of creating one. She has this remarkable way of helping people stop seeing themselves through the lens of what has happened to them and instead through the lens of what is still possible. Somewhere in every conversation she seems to hand people a little bit of themselves back.
One message she returns to time and time again is something she calls “never giving up the power of the purse.” On the surface it sounds like financial advice, but it runs much deeper than money. To Rochelle, having your own income, backing yourself and building something that belongs to you is about freedom. It’s about knowing that no matter what life throws at you, you have choices. Watching her rebuild her own life has made that belief feel less like a philosophy and more like lived experience.
Perhaps that’s why Revved feels like such a natural extension of who she is. It isn’t simply a business summit or another networking event. It’s the physical manifestation of everything she believes about people and possibility. When Rochelle describes the vision behind Revved, she says she wants to create “personal, professional and purposeful change for New Zealand,” because she believes “the distance between where you are now and where you want to be is a series of conversations.” It is such a beautifully simple idea, but the more I sit with it, the more true it feels. Every opportunity, partnership, business and brave decision usually begins with one conversation.
Watching Rochelle build Revved has been like watching someone create the room they wished had existed when they were finding their own way. She isn’t interested in gathering the loudest voices or the biggest egos. She’s interested in bringing together people who are willing to think differently, challenge each other and leave with the courage to act. She often says that courage is contagious, and after spending time in a room she has created, I don’t think she’s wrong. People leave believing a little more is possible than they did when they walked in.
I suppose that’s Rochelle’s real superpower. She has an extraordinary ability to see the magic in people long before they can see it in themselves. When I ask what she hopes people feel after working with her, her answer is beautifully simple. “I have the ability to see the magic in people. My hope is that they leave seeing the magic in themselves.” If you know Rochelle, you’ll know that isn’t just a lovely sentiment. It’s the way she’s chosen to live her life.
So today I encourage you to leave your own trial of glitter behind you and connect with my sister, shes like a magic genie and you wont ever be the same in the best way possible.
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