Your Business: Women entrepreneurs - Mimi Gilmour, Burger Burger

Mimi Gilmour, founder and creative director of Burger Burger.

Mimi Gilmour is a hospitality entrepreneur who is the founder and creative director of Burger Burger, and a founder and former co-owner of the Mexico group of restaurants.

Have you always wanted to run your own businesses?

Yes, I guess I have. My mother says I've always been blindly ambitious. My parents went to great efforts to instill a very solid work ethic in my sister and I, and most importantly I love the freedom to be creative and create new experiences for people.

I'm also not very good at being told what to do by other people, so perhaps this contributed a little bit too! Both of my parents have had entrepreneurial endeavours and I think that's why I always felt I had the ability and capacity to do so too.

You experienced some pretty spectacular growth with the Mexico group of restaurants. What are some of the key lessons you learnt about managing a fast growing business like that?

Yes we did. I was one of a team of ambitious and fearless business partners. When I look back at what my key lessons from Mexico's growth were it was largely around how to build sustainable systems that allow the teams of people working for you to work comfortably and efficiently without breaking them.

If you don't have good people around you in our industry then it makes it really hard for you to achieve much. A high turnover of staff sucks the life out of your resources and is incredibly damaging to morale.

This is actually where the idea came from for our staff training programme that we're currently building. We're building and testing it internally, but our ultimate dream is for it to be made available to the wider market.

We need to change the way hospitality service-based roles are viewed in New Zealand if we expect to continue to see to see the growth we've experienced over the past five years.

What do you think are your key strengths as an entrepreneur? And are these things that you feel have come naturally to you, or that you've had to work on developing through time and experience?

You never stop learning. You learn through experiences, surrounding yourself with good leaders and by making mistakes. I think the most common misconception is that making mistakes is a bad thing, whereas I actually think my mistakes are what have made me today.

I think my key strengths as an entrepreneur are that I'm fearless, and therefore I'm ambitious. Thanks to my parents' encouragement I know how to work hard and I love working with talented, hard working, honest people to make great things happen. I also thrive in chaos!

On the other hand, what have been some of the biggest challenges you've faced on your journey as an entrepreneur?

The biggest challenges have been managing my mistakes and understanding how to turn them into lessons for the future. The biggest and most stressful mistakes I've made personally have been financial and that's why I surround myself with the right people to enable me to make the right decisions - and so I can spend my time doing what I do best.

Who are your key role models, mentors or networks, and what influence have they had on your development as an entrepreneur?

I would have to say that my family has played a huge role in my life and the development of the characteristics I attribute to my successes. I've also had a lot of wonderful teachers along the way. Two years ago I joined Co. of Women and that has been one of the best decisions I've made as a business woman. Some of my poor friends had been listening to me harp on about my challenges for a long time, and not quite knowing what to say, and now as part of that group I've found myself surrounded by women facing the same issues as me!

I've also had access to some pretty incredible, successful female entrepreneurs that have very kindly given me their time and advice, both of which have been invaluable. But don't get me wrong, I've also had some very smart, successful and charming male mentors along the way too!