That is the message from Business Mentors New Zealand — which has been matching experienced business professionals with small business owners for more than 30 years — and the title of events held recently in Dunedin and Queenstown.
For Balclutha-based life and identity coach Amy Ewald, having a mentor in her business for more than two and-a-half years has been a beneficial move.
"They made a superb match because I love my mentor and I think my mentor kind of loves me too. She hasn’t told me otherwise," Mrs Ewald said.
"She’s just been really good. She’s got this knack of asking the right questions and helping me make good decisions."
Business South was contracted to run the programme in the South and could connect potential mentees with a mentor to help them and their business.
Ms Ewald has only been a coach for the past two years; prior to that, she owned a photography business which was when she was first introduced to her mentor.
But 2020 provided a double-whammy — the arrival of Covid-19 and the diagnosis of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma for the mother of two young children.
Now in remission from cancer — "long may that last" — she has since written a book about her experience which she described as one of the best things to have happened to her.
"Don’t get me wrong, it was difficult. It was also one of the best things that happened to me. I know it seems really weird to say that," she said.
A fan of Winston Churchill’s quote — never let a perfectly good crisis go to waste — she said there were two choices people could make in a crisis; either say "life is unfair, everyone’s out to get me" or look for opportunities the crisis presented. She chose the latter.
In Ms Ewald’s photography business, the work she particularly loved was portraiture. She loved people and landscapes were not dynamic enough. She also did transformation images — before and after — mostly of women, and was focused on providing a good experience from start to finish.
After the first Covid-19 lockdown, she picked photography back up again but it was the second lockdown that made her decide to "pivot" — something that she discussed with her mentor.
Even though she was vaccinated, she decided it was not worth it to risk her immune system. But having a business that could not be done over the phone or video call meant she had to go "back to the drawing board".
She asked her photography clients what made them choose her when there were a plethora of photographers available and they told her it was the experience. She helped them see who they were and, during the time she spent with them prior to taking photographs, they realised "I’m a boss", she said.
When it came to taking the photograph, her job was largely done — taking the photo was the easy part. It was the experience that made the client realise their self-worth and identity and the photography was almost a "by-product", she said.
Once that realisation happened, she talked it through with her mentor who also liked the idea of a coaching business.
"It was just good to have someone walk alongside me ... a sounding board, and just getting through the steps with me."
With her coaching business, it was not about giving advice, rather it was about asking the right questions. There was also a deeper level of relationship than her previous business "because there’s only so much I can do with a photography client over the course of a photography session".
The likes of Zoom had enabled Ms Ewald to have clients overseas, as well as throughout New Zealand. Now that her immune system was settling down, she was keen to get more active in the South Otago community, as well as continuing her involvement with Business Mentors, as much as she enjoyed working online, she missed face-to-face contact.
And her experience with the mentoring programme had been so good that she had inquired about the possibility of becoming a mentor herself, she said.
BMNZ was the only independent national business mentoring service provider to the small business sector and had provided business support for more than 80,000 existing small business owners and not-for-profit executives.
