SUSANA Sarmiento uses her voice like a wind instrument.

The 34-year-old takes a deep breath, then says, in an unbroken stream: "I'm never going to stop working. I'm just not one of those people and I don't see it as work anyway because I'm just having so much fun".

She trills and flutes, drops down low and slow, then rockets back up into the high notes.

She's lovely to listen to and easy to understand, but when the interview is transcribed, Sarmiento's dyslexia is evident.

"I say, honey, English is my second language, sometimes I Spanglish as well, I get my words front to back, back to front, but I've got so much passion that the message comes through."

Sarmiento has made a living out of getting her message across.

You've probably seen her on Breakfast, teaching Pippa Wetzell how to distress jeans, work out her face shape or rock in a red dress. Sarmiento also writes a column in NZ Fitness magazine and appeared on makeover show 10 Years Younger.

This year, she will sell her styling and corporate branding business, La'Qua Image, to launch three self-help books and hit the international speaking circuit. She's got backing from a big company but can't name it yet.

Good friend and sailor Graeme Kendall has every faith she'll make it. "I think that's something she can handle."

He describes her as effervescent, independent, hard-working and ambitious but says she's always had womens' interests at heart.

Watching Sarmiento during this interview, it's easy to believe she could be New Zealand's answer to Oprah.

Her Northcote home overlooks the water. It's decorated with lilies, candles and abstract paintings. A champagne bucket, complete with glasses and bottle, sits on the bench.

Sarmiento rips fresh mint and squeezes lemon into a jug of water, and we sit upstairs, in the light airy room she uses for yoga and meditation. She is as impeccably groomed as an actress: long shining hair, radiant skin, bright, tight Versace pants and a pleated, floaty, yellow halter-neck top. Amazingly, she's single. She has known, ever since she was about five or six, that she wouldn't marry until her mid 30s.

"I don't need to look, I just know it's going to happen ... That man's just going to be phwoar," she smacks her little fist into her palm and laughs.

She talks about inner peace, yin and yang, empowerment. One of her mantras is "it feels good to give" and it's clear that Sarmiento is constantly giving. Often she skips from answering a question about herself, to giving advice to women in the same situation. She says she finds it hard to accept help, but her close friends and family know to keep trying until she folds.

"When I don't give, life just feels really bland.

"If you put me behind a computer and crunch figures I'd just be a flower." She holds her slim brown arm up, then droops it dramatically.

Sarmiento's roots are in Peru but her family ran from the volatile country when she was about eight or nine. They left almost everything behind.

"My dad said, you know, pack your favourite stuff, we're going. I'm like, my teddy bear's not even going to fit in that!"

On Auckland's North Shore, the cheeky, spirited little girl was in for a shock.

"I'd never been to a dairy before in my entire life, because [in Peru] it's just dangerous... There was this sense of freedom. But it was a culture shock. I was definitely different."

School was no fun for Sarmiento. As well as the cultural divide, she had to "battle" the system because of her dyslexia.

"I learn differently, you know? I would read the textbooks in a tape recorder and I'd play it and in the morning I know the answers."

It was a relief for her to leave school early in sixth form. Desperate for freedom, she moved out of home at 16 to a $250 per week inner-city apartment.

Her first job, as a perky 15-year-old, was selling encyclopaedias.

At 19, she turned her hand to real estate, and became the youngest Harcourts staffer in the country. She bought a corporate coaching business, dabbled in loyalty cards and IT equipment and by 2004 she was earning great money, handling marketing for a property investment firm.

But something wasn't right. A holiday in San Francisco changed her life.

Sarmiento was having a glass of wine in a restaurant when she overheard a stylist talking to a client. She tapped the stylist on the shoulder and after two bottles of wine, Sarmiento knew.

"I went back to the hotel and my boyfriend at the time and said, `That's it. I've found what I want to do. I'm quitting my job.'

"He said `you've had far too much wine'." She laughs

By CATHERINE WOULFE - Sunday News