Eddie Machaalani.
Eddie Machaalani regularly lists “short-term, high-level goals” on a paper sticky note.
Australia has been called the Switzerland of the south. In its Global Wealth Report released this October, Credit Suisse ranked Australians the world's second-richest people, behind the Swiss.
What are you worth? If you feel poor compared to some small business owners you know, here's some rigorous advice on building your wealth.
Two relentlessly self-improving millionaire entrepreneurs reveal the habits that fuel their success.
Tech titan
Eddie Machaalani, 32, is the co-founder of Surry Hills-basedBigCommerce.com: an e-commerce platform that powers more than 20,000 online stores around the world.
One of Machaalani's key success habits is simple. He routinely lists “short-term, high-level goals” on a paper sticky note he applies to his laptop. He recently used the goal-reinforcement technique in hiring three vital workers - his chief financial officer, chief marketing officer and “vice-president of support”.
“Every time I open my laptop, it makes sure I'm focused on the one most important thing I can do today, this week and this month,” he says.
Besides documenting his goals, he practises all kinds of informal study habits that help him “expand his thinking and learn juicy titbits of information”.
He constantly reads books, listens to audio books and watches DVDs: all on the subject of successful entrepreneurs. One of his favourite television shows is the American-made CNBCTitans, which features entrepreneurs including late Apple boss Steve Jobs and management guru Jack Welch.
Machaalani absorbs all the information wherever he happens to be: in the car bound for work, on the treadmill, and on the exercise bike.
Some of his oomph comes from his love-hate relationship with coffee.
“It makes me super-productive but also knocks my energy levels by the end of the day,” he says. “Thirty minutes on the treadmill in the morning makes me three times more productive and keeps me in a more positive mood all day, without the energy collapse,” he adds.
Trowel power
In contrast to e-commerce wiz Machaalani, Rohan Simmons, 40, works in a gritty field, running the Melbourne plastering firmSouth City Plaster. Simmons's yearly turnover is $3.5 million. His success is embedded in his adherence to a range of rituals.
For a start, Simmons (pictured below) has been seeing a business coach weekly for the past six-and-a-half years. The coaching sessions have taught him to set short-term and long-term goals. He looks up to five years ahead and ensures every step he takes keys into his company's vision, he says.
Another of his productive habits is attending neurolinguistic programming (NLP) seminars run by the coaching group Life Beyond Limits, devoted to overcoming stifling beliefs. According to the website, every excuse for lacking wealth is a “finite belief” that can be changed.
Simmons further enriches his future through attending financial mastery seminars run by the business advice firmActionCOACH].
He also reads and listens to business books including Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Hour of Power by Tony Robbins and Blue Ocean Strategy – a look at how to stand out from the pack.
The impact of the informal schooling has been “huge”, he says.
“With education comes confidence - and if you are confident you can make decisions based on knowledge not guesswork,” he says.
No longer does he engage in “self-sabotage”, he adds, explaining that, before he wised up, he worried that hiring new teams would cause more stress. Now, he reckons that hiring staff fuels profit.
So too do his key performance indicators. Think set task completion times, sales targets and conversion rates. Daily, his production team presents him with performance graphs.
The overriding habit that pulls the picture together is consistency. A consistent performance from a small business owner ensures a consistent team performance, he says.