Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Marcus Aurelius

I saw Steven Spielberg interviewed once. He was launching a new blockbuster film and the interviewer asked him, ‘How do you deal with the pressure of managing such big budgets, and how can you bolster your chances of having a best-selling movie?'

He said, ‘Ninety-nine per cent of a film's success is in the casting. If I get that right, the rest will take care of itself'.

Don't let them in

It's the same with pubs, or any business for that matter. ‘Casting' is critical to success. In other words, who we ‘let in', be they a patron, an employee, an investor or a supplier, dramatically impacts our ability to be successful, because everyone we ‘let in' brings with them a whole bunch of baggage that can very quickly become ours.

Running a hospitality business like a pub is quite different from running a law firm, a factory or a furniture store, in that most of those businesses don't have 10 000 strangers streaming through their doors each week to eat, meet and greet who treat the place as an extension of their loungeroom. That kind of ‘random fun factor' of never knowing who or how many people will come in creates a level of unpredictability that means we have to employ robust procedures to ensure that we don't let the wrong people in.

This is tricky and somewhat counterintuitive because as a publican, I'm in the business of letting everybody in. In fact, the more we let in, the better, so working out who to let in and who to keep out is a delicate balancing act. Do we have a strategy for managing this? Yes. It's very simple. It's called ‘don't let them in' in the first place.

The reason this is so important is because I know that once someone is on the premises, it becomes very difficult to get them off the premises, so I work very hard to ensure that they don't even get past the front door. Sure, a few rock stars (real and imagined) can dazzle us with their brilliance and get in the side door causing a few upsets, but for the most part, if we work hard to not let them in to begin with, the time and effort taken to remove them is minimised.

That's why we have bouncers (or security guards, as we now like to call them) and I employ a lot of them these days. They are a critical factor in helping me keep the undesirables out and taking care of the good people who are already in. A good bouncer is worth their weight in gold! And their presence can save lives. Here's how one saved mine.

'Don't let them in' extends to corporate customers too

If you're just starting out, or you've just bought a business, chances are money is tight. You're probably doing everything yourself as well. As a result, you don't have time to vet everything that comes your way, including customers. This may sound counterintuitive, but ‘don't let them in' can also apply to customers. One bad customer  —  a customer who either takes up so much of your time you can't focus on what needs to be done, or a customer who doesn't pay on time — can bring you down. But this kind of risk can be avoided if you ask the right questions before you strike up a deal.

It takes guts to ask the difficult questions — like ‘How long will it take you to pay me?' or ‘Can we fast track this payment as we need it for cash flow?' — especially when you're desperate for customers, and you want to present yourself in a professional manner. But if you don't, you run the risk of losing the business anyway, so you may as well speak up, set the rules or at least ask for help.

Don't just know the rules, set the rules

‘Don't let them in' is not just a policy for customers and employees. It extends to investors too. I've had a few corporate Craigs try to get in and take over my business and various boards I've been on. They're exactly the same as the double-denim Craig (just better dressed). While Craig used physical coercion to get his way, the corporate Craigs use financial and legal coercion to get theirs, and will stop at nothing to win. People like this, often sociopathic and narcissistic or a delightful blend of both, can be as dangerous to you and your business as Craig was to me and mine. They are smart, calculating, often cashed up and use the courts as their personal playground for sorting out disputes.

I understand why so many business owners often get taken down by people like this. They're desperate for investors, eager to be agreeable and don't do the due diligence needed to assess if these people, and their money, are the right fit for their business.

So, how do you keep investors like these out when you've worked so bloody hard to get them in, especially if you don't know them well to start with? It all begins and ends with a simple little document called the constitution. Well, it's not that simple and it's not that little, but I didn't want to deter you from reading on because your constitution could save you from having your company stolen away from you.

When you bring investors on board, the constitution is without a doubt one of the most important documents you will ever issue. Why? Because it's the guidelines for how you'll engage with your investors: resolve disputes, make decisions, spend money, report back and more. The trick is to ensure that you set the rules of the constitution so that you control the game from the start.

Don't wait until you're successful to create and establish the ‘rules'. Work them out now and get professional help to create these guidelines because one investor brought in on the wrong terms can bring you down before you've even begun. If your end game is to sell the business, then put the constitution in place early on so that you have a business to sell.

In other words, if you know the rules, you can reap many rewards, including a world championship medal, and I mean that literally.

Let me be clear. I am a big fan of Tim Ferriss, though I don't necessarily endorse his ‘winning at all costs' approach. But what I do endorse is his dedication to researching the rules of his chosen sport to see how he could use those rules to his advantage. We all have access to the rules of our chosen game. Whether it's corporation law, tax law or gambling law, it's our duty to study the laws, know them and work within them as best we can to our advantage.

Tim's story illustrates three lessons:

1. You can achieve anything if you set your mind to it.
2. You can use the rules to your favour.
3. Those who don't know all the rules — or choose not to play by them — will be beaten by those who do, irrespective of time, talent and training.

Increasingly, the people who rise to the top and have an advantage (in all walks of life) are no longer those who accomplish truly great things, but those who figure out how to make the rules work for them.

So, what are the rules of how your business operates? They are yours to define, but once you do, they are placed in the constitution and everyone, including you and your investors, is duty bound and legally obligated to follow them. It goes without saying that if you don't craft your constitution carefully, you can lose big time and not even know about it until it's too late.

The reason I know so much about constitutions is because when I set up my first constitution, I got it terribly wrong and nearly lost control of my business. Here's what happened.

How a faulty constitution nearly cost me my business

When I set up my first investment fund to buy a bigger pub and attract investors, my lawyer inadvertently created a constitution that didn't work for the benefit of the fund, nor that of the business. It was a simple mistake and it came down to numbers. My constitution said 100 per cent of our shareholders had to vote on and approve financial decisions. This one clause really tripped us up as it now meant, moving forward, that if we wanted to do anything, from something as simple as buying paint or a new pool table, right through to major decisions like refinancing or renovating the building, we had to get 100 per cent of the shareholders to agree and approve it, every single time.

Can you imagine how limiting this would have been to us? We'd need to call a meeting to approve the purchase of a pot plant!

My saving grace was I knew all the investors personally and they were all great people who understood how limiting this clause was. I asked them if they would approve an amendment to the constitution, which would state that we would need only 65 per cent of the shareholders to approve decisions. Fortunately, they agreed and it gave us a great deal more freedom to be more agile and pivot quickly when lucrative opportunities arose.

(We landed upon 65 per cent as a figure, but depending on your company structure, or your personal need for control, you may want to ensure you only need the approval of 51 per cent of the shareholders.)

Ultimately, you want to retain as much control over your company as you can while ensuring the shareholders still have a say in the important decisions.

Not everyone has your best interests at heart

When it comes time to create your constitution, turn to the experts — your accountant and lawyer — and don't move a muscle until you do. Don't think you can do this on your own; you almost certainly can't, especially if you don't have a financial or legal background. You're dealing with people's money, money they've worked bloody hard to obtain, and you need to protect yourself, but you also need to protect them from other investors who may not be as aligned with your vision as you want.

You can't assume that everyone has the same goals or vision as you. For example, some investors may want to take dividends when you'd rather invest them back into the business. Some investors may not want to invest in capital improvements because this will tie up funds that could have been considered profit. Some may have a short-term view of their investment, whereas you are prepared to forgo profits for a long-term win.

There are lots of reasons why you can have misaligned investors on board, and some of those investors won't reveal their true motivations until they are already on board (or worse, on the Board).

Choose your investors carefully

There are ways to avoid these kinds of things happening. For a start, try not to let people who don't have your best interests (or that of the business) into the room in the first place. Second, you must select your investors with as much caution as you do your staff. They are all part of your team — and make no mistake, a bad investor can stuff you up just as easily as an errant employee. Don't think minor investors with tiny shares can't stuff you up as well. If they all band together they can have significant sway too and take the business down a road you don't want to go.

Trust, but check

When you're starting out, and you're getting traction from interested investors, it's natural to want to act fast, secure their interest and get the money in. It's also tempting to take shortcuts and use low-cost corporate documentation and legal templates sourced from a well-meaning buddy, a kind uncle or the internet. The only trouble is, when you get them checked out by a reputable lawyer, they won't accept those templates as they'll want to use their own documents (so they can charge you more!). They'll also want to take responsibility for giving you accurate documentation so that they can defend it, and you, if push comes to shove. You may as well just hire a respected lawyer to get it done right in the first place.

When you do get the official documents back from lawyers and accountants, and you're ready to send it all off to the investors for signing, read through every line very carefully, ask questions, think of the worst-case scenario, ensure you understand every sentence — every clause — and then go through it all again.

If possible, try to engage an industry-specific lawyer who knows your industry well. It will be a premium worth paying. You can find one by getting in touch with your industry association.

Susannah and Abdullah were tripped up because there was a clause in the paperwork that they either didn't know was there, or did know but didn't understand. They trusted the accelerator but didn't take the time to ask questions or get advice from an expert. The duo's visionary zeal and preference to look at the bigger picture meant they missed important details, which cost them $100 000.

So, here's a tip: Don't ever read or sign important documents when you're hungry or tired. It's the worst mistake you can make. While it's tempting to think you can ‘whip through it', you'll miss important distinctions because your energy is low. Resolve to get a good feed or a good sleep and attack it first thing the next day.

This sounds pretty obvious, right? But you'd be amazed at how often people sign documents that commit them to a range of responsibilities without even reading the document. Maybe taking care of details like this is not your ‘thing'. Unfortunately, it has to become your ‘thing' or it will cost you, like it did Susannah and Abdullah.

What's your blind spot?

My daughter is learning to drive right now and I'm constantly reminding her to ‘check her blind spot' so that she can see any danger coming from behind. The mirrors can catch most things coming, but not everything, so she has to physically turn her head to see if there's a motorbike or a car sitting in that hard-to-see space.

Most of us have psychological blind spots too: a persistent lack of insight or awareness about a specific area of our behaviour or personality. Why do we have it? Mainly because recognition of our true feelings and motives would be painful, but more simply put, because we ‘don't know what we don't know' or even simpler, we don't do things we are not good at, don’t like or don’t enjoy. Blind spots have cost more than one smart business owner their livelihood. It cost Susannah hers. We all have them, so if you can spot yours before it trips you up, you'll be ahead of the game.

Sometimes we're definitely aware of our blind spots, which is a good thing. Then it's no longer a blind spot, which is also a good thing because we can deal with it. But if we don't want to deal with it, or change our behaviour to address it, we turn it into our ‘identity' and that absolves us of the need to deal with it because it's ‘just who we are'. How convenient.

These (limiting) identities show up in all sorts of ways in the workplace, and are normally prefaced with people saying, ‘I'm not good with … ' It could be:

‘I'm not good with numbers.'

‘I'm not good with people.'

‘I'm not good with detail.'

We can't all be good at everything. Your blind spot could be networking, finance, following up or customer care. Find it, acknowledge it and hire someone who can help you do it before it causes you trouble. My blind spot was marketing.

How to find your blind spot

If you're not aware of your own blind spots, or limiting beliefs (or identities), they can be very costly and can create all manner of headaches down the track. For example, I often see employees sign their employment contract without even reading the contract. I say, ‘Do you think you'd better read that before you sign it?' and they say, ‘Nah, we trust you'. I advise them to read it again and make sure they fully understand, before they sign it.

When I ask them why they haven't read it, they say, ‘I didn't have time', ‘I'm not smart enough to understand it' or ‘I'm not good with detail'. That may be true, but it doesn't absolve them from not knowing what they're doing. Those limiting beliefs (and they're nothing but limiting beliefs) will trip you up, and will continue to trip you up until the pain they create outweighs the effort it takes to deal with them.

For the most part, you may never have to refer to the contract again, but when conflict arises, people will rush to review the contract and discover to their dismay that they agreed to something they never intended. It's too late to do much about it then. It could be decades later that this debacle comes back to haunt you. Whatever you do, don't sign something you don't understand. Don't assume the lawyers will pick everything up. They won't. And they won't take responsibility for it when they don't either. You can't say, ‘Hey lawyer, you said “sign this document” — I did and now the shit has hit the fan. It's your fault, and I want my money back'.

They'll just say, ‘Caveat emptor, my friend. Caveat emptor (buyer beware). And here's my invoice for telling you that, in six-minute increments'.

What you sign now has the potential to come back and haunt you many years later. You'll probably even have forgotten what you signed, but I can assure you, their lawyers won't. Because when the shit hits the fan — and if you're doing anything remotely risky, interesting or worthwhile, then it will — the first thing their lawyer will ask to look at is the constitution. And from there, all things hence will flow.

Do your homework. Do your due diligence. Check your blind spots. Identify your limiting beliefs. Acknowledge what you're not good at, and either take the time to get good at it, or delegate it to someone who is. The consequences of not doing that can be catastrophic.

Act in haste, repent at leisure

I have an affinity for numbers and detail so I'm always going to be drilling down into documents to see what's working and what's not. I take the time to do it because I'm good at it and I enjoy it. But if you're not like me, then you'll either need to ‘take the time' to learn it, start ‘thinking like a lawyer/accountant' and do the legwork to understand it, or you could find yourself on the wrong end of a contract and losing control of the decision making, how you spend your money and ultimately, losing control of the company.

How can we overcome these limiting beliefs?

It all comes down to mindset and time.

Find the time to learn

When I was around 19 years old, I was walking home from work, and I saw an elderly gentleman in his front yard. He was probably about 40 but to my young eye he looked positively geriatric. He was on his front lawn repairing a carburettor from the EJ Holden that sat in his driveway. He had all the parts splayed out on the lawn and was methodically tending to each piece, inspecting each in detail to see what was malfunctioning.

I stopped and watched him, intrigued with the patience and persistence he displayed in detecting the rogue element.

I said, ‘I wish I could repair stuff like that but I'm no good with cars'. He said, ‘You could fix it if you took the time to learn it'.

Wham! That comment hit me like a tonne of bricks. He didn't mean to sound rude; he was just stating a fact, but I was taken aback with the gravitas of what he said.

He was right. I could almost certainly fix that simple piece of machinery if I took the time to learn; if I took the time to pull it apart, see how it all fitted together and saw what made it tick. In fact, I could probably turn my hand to most things if I took the time to learn them. As could you; as could anyone. The question is: Do we take the time? For most of us, the answer is no. But imagine if we did? Imagine how many problems we could avoid in our lives if we just ‘took the time' to work them out.

Was Mick good at detail? Not really, but he also chose not to be. That was his identity. In reality, he just didn't take the time to do what he needed to do, which was inform the insurance company of his change of address. That one, simple action would have saved him from losing everything. Most of us are not good at something; we all have that blind spot. Find that something, because it could be the thing that causes your downfall.

Play and learn

One of my favourite philosophies is ‘play and learn'. It may sound like a segment from the TV show Play School (and it could be) but I can assure you it's a very adult principle, and one that I have employed many times over with great effect.

For example, when I use technology — and I'm the first to admit while I'm not a philistine or a technophobe, I sometimes need to call on my teenage kids to help me change a setting or download an app. But I digress. When I use technology, and this is a metaphor for other areas in life, if I am so scared of pushing a button that I don't touch any button, how will I learn? Sure, I may delete a database or two or send a random file to the wrong person, but at least I've learned what not to do next time.

This fear of getting it wrong stops us from doing many of the things we need, and ought, to do. If I'm too scared of changing the pub menu, how will I know what my patrons like? If I'm too scared of asking for investors to trust me with their hard-earned money, how will I know what pitch works and what doesn't? How will I grow the business if I'm not prepared to make a mistake?

Keep learning

Benjamin Franklin said, ‘An investment in education pays the highest return' and I totally agree. I did much of my hospitality training at TAFE and have nothing but praise for the institution. I learned some very practical skills that have served me well ever since. I helped them develop the accreditation that trains up our new crop of industry leaders, and genuinely love giving back to the institution that gave me so much. I was just a young adult when I studied at TAFE and I did wonder if the time and effort would be worth it, but my philosophy centred on these key questions: ‘Where will this course take me? Is it part of a bigger picture? If this is a diploma, will it count towards a degree? Will the degree get me to my Master’s? Can I build upon this?' I like to feel that whatever I'm doing is playing a part in getting me to the next stage.