“Lucky to still be standing”: Radek Sali on building a billion-dollar business

Not everyone is cut out to build a billion-dollar business. It takes an enormous amount of self-belief, internal drive and ambition. (A bit of
madness, too.) I am wired differently to many people. I acknowledge that. I don’t say that to be boastful; I say it because this level of unwavering determination, commitment to purpose and relentless passion does not come naturally to most people.

The hard truth is that serious entrepreneurship — the kind that I will detail throughout this book, the kind that creates vast and life-changing wealth for all involved — is not for everyone. Looking back, after everything that happened, I feel lucky to still be standing in one piece. We are told ‘everything is possible’ — think, dream, believe and all that — but it must be backed up with years of effort, energy and application. There are few, if any, formulas for making fast money. (For the record, it will most likely take a minimum of a decade to turn a fledgling concept into a multimillion-dollar proposition.) It starts with making an extraordinary product, selling it for a profit, and then doing it again, again and again.

Whether you want to build a billion-dollar business, a ten-million-dollar business, or a million-dollar business, this book will be of value. You can apply the lessons to any business, at any level, in any sector. In the case of Swisse, with the help of many extraordinary individuals, we took a $15 million business that employed 30 people and turned it into a $2.1 billion enterprise that resulted in one of the biggest private company transactions in Australian history, and we did it all in under ten years.

It has been a roller-coaster journey, and it’s now my privilege to share both the highs and lows of this exhilarating time with you so that you can benefit from my experiences and use those lessons to build your own purpose-led, multimillion-dollar business.

Success was never assured

When I joined Swisse, I didn’t set out to build a billion-dollar business. I joined it to build a business that I truly believed could be a positive force. I joined it because I believed that our product had the potential to make people healthier and happier. I found a product I loved and an industry I cared about, and I wanted to share them both with the world.

Yes, I was ambitious for it to be a global operation, but it was never about making money for the sake of making money. My goal was to make something big, create a lasting legacy and have fun.

I bought into the Swisse business a year after joining, but I was an employee for the entire duration of my time there. I turned up to work, did my job, went home, got paid and did it all again the following week. Yet I always treated the business as if it was my own. I had a home loan, a car loan, and $ 30,000 in credit card debt. I had to budget and balance my finances like everyone else. When I was offered a stake in the Swisse business, I took out loans worth millions of dollars to pay for those shares. If the business didn’t do well, neither did I. If it failed, I would have gone bankrupt. You could say I was invested.

I say this because I want you to know that, like many of you reading this book, I started out as an ordinary employee working for a small business. I did not come from a family where wealth was talked about at the dinner table every night. My mum and dad were medical professionals so we mostly talked about health. I won’t be disingenuous and pretend I had a ‘log cabin’ origin story. Yes, both my parents came from refugee families, landed in Australia with nothing, and worked hard to create financially rewarding lives, but as a result of that hard work, they were able to offer me and my younger sister and brother a world of opportunities. I took what they offered (not always gratefully) with both hands and ran with it. I am deeply indebted to them for the opportunities they provided. They made me who I am.

I have been on both sides of the financial spectrum. I started with very little, and now, having built a business that has rewarded me with an incredible amount of wealth, I can say with some authority that money will not solve all your problems. If you think it will, I can assure you that you will be bitterly disappointed. I know many may scoff at this and think, with some justification, ‘Well, that’s easy for him to say,’ but I’m happy to incur that wrath because I can only tell you what I know to be true for me (and for many I know who have generated a similar amount of life-changing wealth.)

While money is of course important, the pursuit of it at the expense of everything you love, and are passionate about, is folly. It will remove a range of problems but it will create a raft of others too. Problems, or challenges as I like to call them, are like aeroplanes on the runway. As soon as one takes off, another arrives to take its place. Yes, it will enable you to live a life upgraded, but you will still be the same person you are now. So, choose your business endeavour with care; choose something that you can fully devote yourself to, that doesn’t feel like work, that
comes easily to you. Choose something that makes a difference in people’s lives and has the potential to make a positive impact. Don’t sacrifice what you know to be important and valuable in your life for the pursuit of profit.

This doesn’t mean you have to choose a wellness business like I did, or a business even remotely connected to health or wellbeing. Whatever business you choose, find the higher purpose beyond it, the reason ‘why’ it will help others be happier, healthier, in whatever context that may be — financial, artistic, cultural, emotional, spiritual — and focus on that. If you follow your principles, maintain the passion and put people first, the profit will follow.

By the way, pursuing purpose-led entrepreneurship won’t guarantee you an easy or simple life. If you want that, stay where you are as a valued employee or public servant. But if you want a life filled with challenges, risks, thrills and spills — a life that will ask more of you than you ever thought possible, and maybe deliver you a more satisfying, gratifying and life-affirming adventure than you ever thought imaginable — then you are in the right place. Your journey to building a purpose-led, profitable business begins here.

The critical question

The question that kept me up at night throughout my entire career was this: do people enjoy coming to work? As such, I made it my mission to create a workplace that ensured people did. I believe business leaders have a responsibility to give back to their community, and cultivating a positive workplace culture is one way of achieving that. Can you imagine how much happier society would be if everyone enjoyed going to work?

This article is an excerpt from the book How to Build a Billion-Dollar Business by Radek Sali.

Radek Sali is the executive chairman of Light Warrior and Wanderlust Australia, and the former CEO of Swisse Wellness.