How I Succeeded: Taxify’s Sam Raciti

How I Succeeded is a regular series on Lifehacker where we ask business leaders for the secrets and tactics behind their success. Today: Sam Raciti, country manager at Taxify.

Current gig: Country manager, Taxify Australia

Location: Melbourne, Australia

Current mobile device: iPhone 8

Current computer: Razer Blade Stealth Ultrabook

One word that best describes how you work: Passionately

What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?

Slack, Atlassian, Headspace, Taxify, Asana and my Steelseries headphones.

What social network do you find the most useful?

I’m not huge on social media personally, but I would say I use LinkedIn the most – it’s a great resource for businesses.

What were the most important lessons you learned while growing your business?

1. People are your most important asset, invest in them and they will invest in your business.
2. Brute force is not the answer, you can’t always just throw more people at a problem and expect it to translate into better results. Quality over quantity.
3. Good ideas come from everywhere, so be sure to listen more than you speak
4. Communication is key, ensuring that our local team had direct and unfettered access to our HQ office was really important – but a non-issue. Internal communications at Taxify are incredibly flat and free-flowing. It places great emphasis on communication and it’s certainly one of the best companies I’ve worked for in that respect.

What has been the most surprising part of your business journey?

The collection of talented and diverse people we have working at our company. We focus on hiring on attitude and this really shines through when you meet our team.

What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?

I am described as a goofball by my team because I try to make sure everyone is having a good time whenever I have company, inside and outside the workplace. So, maybe making people smile?

What’s your sleep routine like?

Broken. I travel a fair bit and have young ones at home so admittedly it’s not 100 percent caused by work I usually operate on roughly 6 hours sleep – I will slip in a power nap or use headspace throughout the day if I know I have meetings later in the evening to keep me spritely.

What advice would you offer to other businesses on how to succeed?

Dare to be great – be relentless in this pursuit.