Building Something From Nothing: Steph Wood on Entrepreneurship & Sol Goods

Steph Wood never imagined she would become an entrepreneur.

Growing up in Western Australia, Steph struggled to find her place at school and left at 15 after securing a pharmacy traineeship. What followed was anything but a traditional career path: pharmacy, makeup artistry, building and architectural design, travel, surfing, and eventually a move to New Zealand.

Each experience gave Steph another skill she would one day use to build Sol Goods, the New Zealand-made natural sunscreen and skincare brand she founded after struggling to find a reef-conscious, mineral sunscreen that could withstand long days in the ocean.

What began with Steph making zinc in her own kitchen has grown into a brand stocked in around 120 stores across New Zealand, expanding into Australia and earning national recognition at the 2026 Viva Beauty Awards.

In this episode of The Guest Speaker, Steph shares what building a product business actually looks like - from bootstrapping her first production run and learning about formulation, testing and manufacturing, to understanding margins, finding sales channels, teaching herself Meta advertising and making plenty of mistakes along the way.

But this conversation is about more than sunscreen.

It’s about backing yourself before you feel completely ready, recognising that skills gained in one chapter can become invaluable in another, and understanding that there is no single timeline or pathway you need to follow.

For anyone wondering what they want to do, changing direction, or sitting on an idea they’re afraid to pursue, Steph’s message is refreshingly simple:

You’ve got time.