Ken Pumipi grew up in Manurewa, had his first daughter at fourteen, and was working commercial concrete before he was sixteen. His uncle VJ and cousins worked at ProCon, one of Auckland's biggest commercial concrete companies, doing floors and foundations on city skyscrapers. He started on the concrete vibrator, graduated to raking, and learned to keep pace with the screeders on pours of 1,000 to 2,000 square metres that kicked off at three in the morning. He did two years of that before things got loose.

At sixteen or seventeen, going off the rails by his own account, his mother and stepfather got him out of Auckland and onto a boat. He was shipped down to Napier and put on a vessel to the Chatham Islands. He lived there for a year and a half, starting at Peter Thomas's fish factory, scrubbing floors and shelling kina before getting a knife and learning to fillet. About 800 kilometres east of the South Island, the Chathams held around 500 people when he was there, one police officer who would follow you home from the pub, and Moriori communities that Ken describes as living off the grid in a way that made the rules he had brought from Auckland completely beside the point. He was young enough that he tried to import them anyway. It did not take. He was still there when Cyclone Pam came through and the cray boats were banging up and down in the harbour.

After the Chathams he made his way to Nelson and joined a Talley's deep sea trawler, the Amity Enterprise, with 42 crew. Three years of that: six hours on, six hours off, twelve weeks at sea before a two-day unload and back out. No alcohol on board, drug tested at the dock, and two beers at Christmas if you happened to be sailing over it. The boat ran big trawl doors and could haul 35 to 50 tonnes of hoki and ling in a single catch. Ling are long orange fish, around 1.7 metres, that Ken describes as looking like eels without the looks. The rule for getting through a long trip was to keep your head off your family and not let it spiral: those boats did not turn around for anyone, and there was a crew on his trip who lied about a bereavement, got the boat brought back, and copped a $150,000 fine.

He saved $50,000 to $60,000 from fishing and had his first crack at a concrete business in the Far North, operating as Kaipara Concrete out of the Bay of Islands and Kaitaia. He covered the run from Kaitaia down to Whangarei and up through Kaikohe, did two to three years of it, and then COVID hit and conditions turned. He moved to the Waikato to get back alongside his partner and her family. A mate of his parents gave him another chance to start again. His brother now owns Prestige Concrete Specialists and Ken runs it as GM. Seven guys on the crew, split across sites running prep and pour simultaneously. A 100 square metre driveway takes one to two days of prep and pours on the third. Ideal conditions: overcast, not too hot, under about 25 degrees, because above that the concrete starts going off before you are finished with it.

The podcast connection came through content. Ken and the crew had been putting reels out, including one about still being on site at six when you thought you were going home at three, and another that went viral whose exact words he declines to repeat on the mic. Jason saw William Wairau on site with the Prestige crew and followed the page. Ken reached out, Jason responded. William had turned up on site, got the gear on, lifted morale considerably, and had a minor car incident on the way there that is confirmed but not worth expanding on. Away from concrete, Ken has been putting money into Hamilton's boxing scene, sponsoring TMT gym fighters Titus Proctor, who has not lost a fight, and Puk Qiao, as well as the Breakers-affiliated fighter Bubba Tydel. His brother sponsored King of the Streets winner Dekka Armstrong. His oldest daughter is heading to Adelaide with her mum and stepdad, who is also a concrete layer. His youngest, Tawa, comes to work with him.