Damon Harvey wears more hats than most men manage in one lifetime. He's a journalist by training, a PR advisor and strategic marketer by trade, and the editor and publisher of The Profit, Hawke's Bay's business magazine. He co-owns O Studio, chairs Gemco Group, spent three terms as a Hastings District councillor and fifteen years on the board at Sport Hawke's Bay. He's married with five daughters. On paper, it's a full life. That's exactly why I wanted him on.
I came across Damon through a mayoral campaign billboard in my neighbour's yard, then kept bumping into him through the work he does in the community. What pulled me in properly was a piece he wrote called Being Damon - a public bit of self-examination off the back of losing that mayoral race. Most men come out of a loss like that and just charge into the next thing. Damon stopped. Sat in a sauna with his heart rate at 160 and realised something had to give.
We get into what it actually costs to be the bloke who's always on - the PR man who can't communicate at home, the councillor who nearly lost sight of who he was there to serve, the father working out how to close the gap with his stepdaughters. We talk tall poppy syndrome, why Kiwi crowds make you prove yourself before they'll laugh with you, and why he reckons we hand people responsibility too late in life. And we sit with something heavier too — the suicide of a close mate's daughter that week, and what it actually takes to keep checking in on each other after the funeral's done.
This one's local in parts, Hawke's Bay through and through, but the questions underneath it aren't. What are you actually building all this for, and who's it for once the title's gone?
If it lands, pass it on. That's how more men find their way to doing the work.
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