Leighton Cosgrove left Hamilton Boys' High at 16 with no real plan, no job lined up, and a simple ultimatum from his dad: you can leave school, but you don't come home until you've found work. What he found instead was a workshop with its doors open — and he offered to sweep the floors for free, just for the chance to learn. In this episode of ShedLife NZ with Jason Davis, Leighton walks through the unlikely path that took him from an unpaid floor-sweeper to General Manager of one of New Zealand's leading nutrition export companies.

Leighton pulls back the curtain on the protein industry most Kiwis never think twice about — including the surprising reveal that New Zealand's most popular protein powder brand isn't even made here, with cattle raised in California, processed in the US, packed in India, then shipped back to sit on our own supermarket shelves. He breaks down exactly why grass-fed New Zealand dairy is fundamentally different, and why "New Zealand made" should mean more to us than it currently does.

We also get into the story of Radex Nutrition itself — founded by three athletes (a cyclist, a swimmer and a sailor) who got sick of sacrificing nutrition for convenience while training and travelling, built around freeze-drying technology and a deep partnership with Fonterra's own research and development centre. Leighton explains why they chose to manufacture in the Waikato instead of importing, how the business now exports more than it sells domestically into markets like Japan, Hong Kong and China, and how they're using contract manufacturing to help other New Zealand growers — black currants, kale, blueberries — get their products onto shelves around the world.

The most honest part of the conversation is Leighton's own career story. After years on the tools as a stainless steel fabricator, a promotion into business development triggered his first ever panic attack. He quit after just five weeks, humbled and certain sales wasn't for him — only to discover that his very first customer visit, a half-built Radex facility, would become the company he'd eventually run.