Mel's Story

Mel MacDonald is an Award-Winning Entrepreneur, Investor and Acclaimed Business Growth Expert based in Brisbane, Australia.

✔️ From a small town upbringing to a degree in analytical chemistry to laboratory manager to a senior management role in a global company by the age of 30.

✔️ From residential investor to commercial property investor and multiple resort owner.

✔️ From building an award winning education business in her 30s (and getting listed in BRW’s Fast 100) to buying a national college and growing it by 800% (before selling it to a publicly listed company).

✔️ From “renovating” businesses and matching them with empty commercial properties, to sought after speaker, to author, to business growth advisor helping other entrepreneurs!

There is not much in the world of business or property that Mel has not done. What she loves best these days, even better than making deals, (and studying wildlife – she is still a brainy science nerd underneath it all!), is helping other entrepreneurs apply her growth methods to their own businesses.

One of Mel’s current clients has had growth of 500% in the last 3 years as a direct result of implementing Mel’s advice. Yes, that is not a typo. 500%. They had run successful businesses for many years but nothing like the astronomical growth achieved since Mel became their Business Growth Adviser. One beautiful holiday home, one lifestyle block, and one seriously healthy retirement fund later…

So back to Mel’s story :)

She grew up in a rural, timber town with school teacher parents and with a mother who was happy to drive her round town to sell her homemade modelling clay jewellery to local shops. Let’s call that Mel’s first taste of business- a seed was planted…

Mel started investing in residential property immediately after graduating with her chemistry degree. She had no money for a deposit so devised creative ways to buy property anyway. Back in the mid-1980s before residential property investing was common, Mel thought she had invented the concept when she found a way to purchase her first property without a deposit as a 21 year old, got flatmates in to pay the mortgage and sold off half the backyard. She later became a committee member of NZ’s first Property Investors’ Association and discovered she hadn’t invented the idea after all!

By the age of 25, she was working as a dairy factory laboratory manager and had bought her 9th residential property and made her first million dollars in real estate. She then moved on to become at age 27 the youngest person and first female in her senior technical executive role at the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world.

After being promoted again, Mel realised that the next management step up was probably 15 years away so she moved to Australia to take up a role as a management systems assessor with another global giant. That role allowed her to see “behind the scenes”, meeting the key players and understanding the management systems of some of the world’s most successful companies. Her several years in that role gave her the advantage of being able to leave the corporate world to enter full time business having analysed the best and knowing exactly what would and wouldn’t work in her own businesses.

After a short stint “working” in Vanuatu as a scuba diving guide, she started her first business – a fee for service vocational college, which grew to 2000 students while winning various awards along the way.

While the college continued to grow, Mel employed a general manager and continued in a strategic role, allowing her more time to pursue other business opportunities. She found an engineering company listed for sale by its liquidators and after lengthy negotiations was able to purchase it for 1/16 of the asking price and have the purchase financed by the liquidator. Within 12 months, she had tripled its turnover and restored it to profitability. She purchased her first (and empty) commercial property in an area where there were proposed zoning changes, moved the engineering business into that building and within twelve months the value of her building had doubled.

She continued to invest successfully in commercial property, and her second profile story in Australian Property Investor magazine was so long it had to be split across two issues!

Within a few years of purchasing her first commercial property, she was looking for a new location for her rapidly growing college. She again looked at the city plans and worked out where the growth would be. She drew a circle on the map and sent one of her colleagues off to find a building to lease inside that circle. They signed a lease and in addition paid $1 for an option to purchase the multi-storey office building at any time during the lease for an agreed price. By the expiry of the time she had to exercise her option to purchase the building, the building had increased in value making her a $3million profit.

Mel continued to feature in books, on TV and as a regular guest radio presenter on how to recognise a good investment.

Her next purchase was a beauty college which she grew by 800% and then sold to a publicly listed company.

In one year, she took her first start up, the vocational college, from being listed in the Queensland 400 to being listed in the BRW Australian Fast 100 and was one of three CEOs invited to speak at the Fast 100 breakfast tour. Mel knows how to grow businesses! (She also knows the most profitable ways to buy and sell them)

A year after the Fast 100 Mel was named in BRW’s Top 100 Australian Business Women and the following year was a finalist in the Queensland Business Woman of the Year.

She is the author of the popular book ‘The Capitalist Hippy’, was featured in the Reno King’s best seller ‘Real Property Real People Unreal Profits’ and contributed a chapter on options to the best-selling book ‘Property is a Girl’s Best Friend’.

In 2009 she was appointed to the Queensland Biotechnology Ministerial Advisory Council by which time she owned an 8-figure commercial and residential property portfolio and was making a 7-figure annual profit from another business.

Over the years she has also chaired the Camellia Trust (housing for homeless young women) and provided pro bono services to develop a training program for indigenous child protection workers for the Abused Child Trust (now known as ACT for kids).

Her more recent purchases have included the purchase of 40 units and management rights in resorts in 2 different countries.

Mel has always got a kick from using her knowledge and skills to help other people succeed. That’s just the way she is. She has always helped anyone who asked with advice but since 2014 Mel has helped multiple private clients grow 7-figure business and property portfolios. And she knows YOU can achieve extraordinary business growth if you decide to and you have the right information.

Through her courses, Mel is making the advice that she gives one-on-one to her clients accessible to everyone. She would love to help you achieve the business growth you deserve!

To view a visual of Mel’s timeline over the years which details more of her adventures, see below.