Some business news reads like a lullaby.

Morning Brew is the opposite.

A free daily newsletter that breaks down what’s happening in business and culture — clearly, quickly, and with enough personality to keep things interesting.

Each morning brings a sharp, easy-to-read rundown of what matters, why it matters, and what it means to you. Plus, there’s daily brain games everyone’s playing.

Business news, minus the snooze. Read by over 4 million people every morning.

Try Morning Brew for Free

Jane Dent never meant to become a journalist.

At seventeen, she was all set for America on a scholarship. The bags were mentally packed. Then every single host family rejected her. "I was absolutely devastated," she told me. But that collapse of a dream became the making of her. Her mother spotted a journalism course at the local technical institute, and Jane grabbed it as an escape hatch from a school she hated.

She arrived at the NZ Broadcasting Corporation at eighteen, shorthand hopeless, typing barely functional, completely unprepared. An early boss was, in her words, "an awful man" who reduced her to tears in the toilet. She had to "toughen up pretty damn quickly."

That's the Jane Dent origin story. Not a master plan. A door closing, another creaking open, and a young woman learning on the job surrounded by men who weren't always kind.

By twenty, improbably, she had her own television show. A fifteen-minute request programme that she found "ridiculous" for someone so young. She worked her way through NZBC, Television One, South Pacific Television. A stint at BBC Radio in London. A brief escape to a shoe shop when the deadlines became too much.

But it was sport that saved her from the fire engine chasing. Colleagues suggested she try sports journalism, there were almost no women doing it, and she "liked sport." It meant getting outside, following cricket, golf, eventually sailing. It meant not sitting behind a desk all day.

The 1995 America's Cup win became a bookend. From her first broadcasting job in 1973 to that victory, she'd built something. She was thirty-nine, forty. Already conscious that television didn't keep older women around. Already wondering what came next.

Here's where Jane's story becomes genuinely useful for anyone standing at a career cliff edge.

When her husband moved into PR, Jane didn't want to be "left behind." She resigned from twenty-three years in broadcasting, "very difficult" and found herself managing media for the All Blacks during rugby's first professional era. She walked into that dressing room knowing Sean Fitzpatrick (team captain) and John Hart (team coach) needed convincing. A friend vouched for her. Told them she was "pretty tough."

She learned about leadership from John Hart. About empowering people rather than bossing them around. About finding her place in a team and being useful.

But the mantra that carried her came later, from another boss: "Fake it till you make it."

Jane admits she still wrestles with imposter syndrome. Still wonders if she has anything useful to offer. Still feels she "just made it up as I went along." The difference is she kept going anyway.

Jane Dent's career spans journalism, broadcasting, elite sport management, tourism (she worked on the "100% Pure New Zealand" campaign), and finally academia at Massey University. The thread through all of it isn't talent, she insists "not the brightest bulb", but relationships. Not burning bridges. Trying to be fair. Having integrity and empathy.

She lives by the Māori proverb: tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata. People, it is people, it is people.

Borrow the confidence others have in you. Jane's belief came from grandmothers, parents, bosses who saw something she couldn't always see herself. When you can't feel it, borrow it.

Curiosity is non-negotiable. "If you lose curiosity, you lose everything." Jane describes her concentration as "that of a peanut", her husband's words, but that scattered attention sometimes "delivers real gems." The trick is catching them.

Old heads, young minds. Jane embraces the combination of experience and fresh perspective. In business, in mentoring and and in life.

You don't need the whole map. For anyone contemplating a mid-life change, her advice is simple: you don't need everything worked out. Others have trod these paths before. Make contacts. Be curious. Be useful.

Jane Dent's career wasn't a straight line. It was a series of learned responses to doors opening and closing, built on a foundation of relationships and a refusal to stop being curious. The scholarship that fell through didn't end her story. It just started a better one.