Arrowtown's Michael Hill has been knighted in the New Year Honours. Taking cues from Dr Suess, Malcolm Gladwell and Dale Carnegie, jeweller Sir Michael's new book, Think Bigger, sold out in just 10 days. Matt Stewart talked to the man who says until his house burnt down when he was aged 40, he was, like so many Kiwis, just ''waiting at the bus stop'' of the ''enormous potential'' within us all.
''What we're doing with our people is training them up as if they're entering the big race. We're treating them as athletes.
''If you're in sync and supercharged, then your goal is easy to achieve.
''If we get them in sync and in harmony we can do miracles,'' the 71-year-old Ernst and Young 2008 entrepreneur of the year said.
Sir Michael's management philosophy permeates the book, in which he urges readers to erase negative self talk and chatter; likening the neural white noise to a corrupting virus on a PC - or ''necktop computer'' as he would have it.
Sales, unsurprisingly, is another featured topic - particularly the art of self-promotion.
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'What they don't tell you at school and university is that you have to sell yourself throughout your life.
''Everyone is a salesperson. We have to do it every minute - you had to sell yourself to me to get this interview ...''
But his bedrock theme is the vital worth of goal setting - the discipline that sets successful people ''apart from the pack'' - an ethic he has worked to thread into the very fabric of his business, right down to the well-tailored suits of staff working in the more than 250 stores throughout Australasia and North America.
''With 2500 staff sharing the same vision, it really changes everything.''
The vision? A global chain of 1000 Michael Hill Jewellers by 2040.
Think Bigger is equal parts self-help book, memoir, diary, comic strip and - because of its stream-of-consciousness style - it has a very immediate feel.
''Very, very few people on the planet set themselves long-term goals and that's the key to it - without a 30-year goal, you just set yourself a series of short-term goals.''
Whether myth or not, he reckons New Zealand's ''she'll be right'' attitude coupled with our supposedly classless society makes Kiwis too comfortable and unwilling to take risks and commit to the future.
''You can sit waiting for the bus you might like to get on - you can sit waiting forever. But even if you get on the wrong bus you're still moving and learning.
''My teachers told me I would never amount to anything and that very nearly happened - at age 40, I could have still been waiting for the bus, but my house burnt down and that made me jump like hell.''
Sir Michael - golfer, cartoonist and violinist - also brought the New Zealand Golf Open to the Wakatipu basin and the Michael Hill violin competition, which he says has become a world-class event.
He freely admits embarrassment at having to stage the biennial event at Queenstown's acoustically challenged Memorial Hall and said he would consider part-financing the construction of a ''boutique-style concert hall'' in the resort.
The concert hall concept has been mooted with the old Queenstown Lakes District Council and Sir Michael hopes he can continue to ''look into'' the idea with the new council.
Of course, it's not going to be easy but it is certainly not impossible -''We just have to find a way of getting the money ...'' he says, which sounds suspiciously like the words of someone who is indeed thinking bigger.
