His father has a small business as a gilded cabinetmaker, and his mother is a freelance photographer. Salmen is a keen photographer and took this interest further by completing a photography course at Unitec. "I process my own film, I process my own negatives. Most of the processing I do is black and white."

His father continues to run his business in the Bay of Islands, using spreadsheets and doing all his tax returns manually. Salmen's latest project involves introducing him to cloud based accounting services. 

Change junkie

Salmen says "change junkie" is an "absolutely fair description" of him.

"There is good change and there is bad change. A good change is where you are growing, you keep on doing new things and exciting things as we have. There have been bad changes as well, but a lot of the things we have done in the past years have been for the positive."