18-07-2025
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Helping businesses succeed, for free
Mentor Mel Stadler. PHOTO: PHILIP CHANDLER
The former co-owner of successful Queenstown hospo business Surreal is nowadays happy mentoring businesses, for free, for not-for-profit organisation Business Mentors New Zealand (BMNZ).
Mel Stadler, who owned the Rees St venue for 26 years, with husband Erich, before selling two years ago, says it's her way of giving back.
"And I was sort of thinking about dabbling in the consultancy field anyway, and I was like this is quite a good way to get my feet wet, so to speak.
"Sometimes owning a business can actually be really lonely, because there's not many people that do it.
"It's really, really hard sometimes — most of the time you're the worst-paid person in the business."
Stadler quips her mentoring's based predominantly on her own mistakes.
An example from her early days was being packed every night and yet not making any money.
"And then I had to take a step back and go, 'what's going on here?'
"And I had all my costings all wrong."
She says her main advice centres on encouraging businesspeople to spend more time working on, rather than in, their business.
Secondly, "you've always got to keep on learning, you've got to keep on changing, it's not like you get to a certain stage and then that's it — unless you sell it".
"I mean I think there's very few businesses out there that have got it perfect, there's always areas to improve."
BMNZ's Hamish Williams says they pair business owners with one of their 1500-plus mentors.
"Mentors receive no pay, no share in the company, they volunteer their time purely to see other Kiwi businesses succeed."
