… life must be understood backwards. But … it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard

They say that little things don't matter. Tell that to the guy with a mozzie in his tent in the middle of the outback, or the woman with a pebble in her shoe. Little things can have a big impact.

Do the little things right

I was reminded of this a while back when I was attending a seminar on applied finance in Melbourne. Across the road from my venue was a tennis centre where all the professional players in town were training for the Australian Open. Being an avid sports lover, I couldn't help but turn my attention to the courts, where Roger Federer was conducting his last-minute training for the finals that night.

I thought Roger would be practising his overhead smash shots, his service or his backhand. But no. He was on the back line, bent over, bouncing a ball, over and over. He must have done it 50 times without a break. Occasionally, he would toss the ball up in the air, as if to serve, but then he'd just let the ball drop to the ground and go back to bouncing it, over and over. I should have been watching an accountant present on time-series analysis, but I was transfixed with watching this master of tennis rehearse his ritual, in awe at his precise preparation and attention to detail.

Knowing he had a Grand Slam tournament ahead of him that night, he could have been doing a hundred different things that afternoon to prepare for the game ahead, but he was doing the most basic thing a tennis player could do. He was bouncing the ball. When it comes to tennis, a little thing like bouncing the ball is the basic building block upon which every other move is made. Get that wrong and you're guaranteed to fail.

When it comes to running my business, I need to know what the basic building blocks of success are too; I need to know what matters. Like Roger, I have a hundred things running around in my head about what I should be focusing on. What I choose to pay attention to will determine the success or otherwise of my business because each and every day, it's the little things that get attended to that make all the difference.

Running a pub looks easy because everyone at the pub looks like they're having a good time, but I can assure you that there's a complex array of activities taking place behind the scenes to make it run smoothly. So, when I wake up in the morning and my mind inevitably turns to the events of the day, I can't help but think about the dozens, even hundreds, of things that need to be done that day. How do I know what to pay attention to? Like Roger, it comes down to knowing what matters and doing the little things right.

Success has its origin in decades past

It all starts with what you want to achieve and acknowledging each and every goal is made up of hundreds of micro activities and minor goals. If you just focus on doing the little things right, consistently, the rest will take care of itself. For example, Roger didn't just turn up on centre court as the reigning champion. He spent decades building up to it, attending kids' tennis competitions, auditioning for training academies, enjoying wins, enduring losses, suffering injuries and setbacks and more. And there he is now, decades later, slaying all before him to become arguably the world's greatest player. Every success story has its origins in decades past.

What Roger reminds me to do is just focus on the little things — the things that matter; the one percenters that underpin the entire success of the business — and to just methodically attend to them every day.

This means you need to know the minutiae of your business, the details, the little things that others might overlook. If you've ever looked at how a front bar operates you can see that there are literally hundreds of moving parts that need to be tracked, monitored, ordered, replaced, replenished. From the lemons that have to be sliced to go in the gin and tonic, to the caramel syrup that flavours a cappuccino, to the paper that goes in the EFTPOS machine. And that's just the small stuff. There are literally thousands of micro-tasks that need to be taken care of across my pub network. How do we do it? We created a robust Real Time Management Reporting (RTMR) system that tracks all our data, stock, staff, cash flow, sales and margins to help us know what's going on at any time. We rely on this to help us make fast, accurate decisions.

I didn't just wake up and know the cost of a box of syrup. That knowledge came from working in the industry for decades, being hands on, negotiating with the suppliers, knowing the numbers, digging into the daily data. This enables me to know in an instant what is happening in that venue, in that bar, on that day.

This obsession with detail may not sound like a big deal, and could even be considered micromanaging, but it's not. We work with such slim margins that we can't afford to be cavalier with detail; it could be the difference between making a profit and a loss, between success and failure.

With over 350 staff, I obviously now delegate much of the day-to-day running of the business to them, but I can do this because I have established simple but powerful systems and structures to help me keep track of everything, so I know what's going on without having to micromanage or be there in person. Those numbers tell me everything.

A lightbulb moment

You're probably wondering, what details should you pay attention to? Only you can know what details you should pay attention to in your business, but every industry has benchmarks that reveal the ‘canary in the coalmine': the things that are not going so well. (That's why you need to attend industry events — so you can find out from others what is standard and what is an anomaly.)

In my pubs, there are dozens of indicators that tell me if a pub or venue is being managed properly. For example, a mate and I had dinner at a local pub a few weeks ago. When I walked in, the first thing I noticed was one of the lightbulbs in the dining room was out. Fair enough. A bulb can blow at any time, but I noted it. I came back a week later for another meal, and the same lightbulb was still blown. That tells me things are not quite right at that venue — that they don't have any systems or procedures for dealing with maintenance. It tells me that someone, somewhere, isn't paying attention to the little things.

There are lots of visual clues in retail operations that declare little things aren't being attended to (and therefore the bigger things too); it could be the signage out the front is faded, the front door doesn't shut properly, the framed Certificate of Appreciation from the local kindergarten is dusty and dated from 2008, or the bell at the accommodation front desk doesn't work.

By extrapolation, you can be sure that this inattention to detail extends to other aspects of the business. It could be the cleanliness of the rest rooms, the handling of food, the maintenance of the ovens or fridges or the management of the finances. This inattention to minor detail can have major consequences.

We hear about fires and accidents in venues. They are terrible things to witness, but from my experience they don't just occur out of the blue. The seeds of the disaster are often sown way in advance.

Why do I care about lightbulbs?

You might be wondering why I'm hyper-aware of busted lightbulbs. When I was 18, I worked at a local pub. I was brand new, and got given all the shit jobs to do. Fair enough. One of them was to change the busted lightbulbs. I got up on the ladder, unscrewed the bulb and got an almighty shock that ran right through my body. It paralysed me for a second. Turns out the wiring was shoddy, hadn't been maintained or inspected for years and was in danger of short circuiting the entire building. In the act of changing a single lightbulb, I could have been killed. Fast forward 30 years and I employ hundreds of young people. I don't want them being harmed or even killed because I didn't take notice of the little things.

What we pay attention to

You need to separate out what makes a difference to the business and what doesn't. To do that, you need to know your numbers. For example, 35 per cent of what we sell over the bar is draught beer, so we spend a lot of time making sure that the beer service is efficient and everything is in excellent working order.

For example, we need to make sure that the kegs are easy to access, our glasses are clean and stacked close to the tap; that the dishwasher is easy to load and fast drying so that we never run out of clean glasses; and that the till has cash and the tea towels are frequently laundered.

This may all sound bleeding obvious, but on a night when we're serving 3000 customers and pouring 30 000 beers, if those details aren't taken care of, a lot can go wrong very quickly, which means we don't serve as much beer as we should. If this happens, we lose our rebate. If that happens, we lose our margins, we become unprofitable, we lose our investors and the dominoes start to fall.

But the fundamental building block that underpins all this is that our beer reticulation system has to be in excellent working order and be meticulously cleaned on a regular basis. Part of the reticulation system is a $10 hose that connects the beer keg to the pouring taps and they're a bugger of a thing to keep clean, but it has to be done or the beer tastes stale and there goes 35 per cent of our alcohol sales — and that's not good for business. If that hose isn't cleaned regularly, the rest of it — the clean glasses, the stacking, the polishing, the till, the tea towels — are for nothing. The beer reticulation system is my one of one percenters.

How we make our pubs so profitable

People often ask how we're able to take a pub, buy it at a good price and then resell or revalue it a short time later at such a high price or valuation — it's because of the little things I'm mentioning here. A rebrand, a refresh, a coat of paint, new systems, new staff, new menus, new events, new promotions. It's not brain surgery, but it takes time and attention to detail to get it all aligned. It's about vision too. I can walk into a pub and see instantly what its potential is. That ‘blink' moment Malcom Gladwell talks about in his book Blink is what I'm referring to here: that busted lightbulb, that broken door: I see it all, instantly, and can tell that the owner has become bored or is worn down with the workload of keeping it all together.

Everyone's welcome

It's not just important to do the little things right, you need to do the right thing — for your customers, your staff and your suppliers — and if you do that, it will come back to benefit you. Maybe not immediately, but in the long term it will pay off.

For example, when someone comes into our pub and orders a glass of water, and nothing else, and then breaks out their laptop, phone, mini speaker and head buds, and proceeds to sit on that glass of water for hours, without ordering so much as a mocha, the temptation would be to say, ‘Pack up your bags and nick off. You're taking up valuable space that paying customers want to use'. Tempting, but no. Our values are that everyone is welcome, no matter who they are, how much they spend or how long they stay. As such, we ensure that not only do they get their glass of water, but that the glass of water comes with cracked ice, a slice of lemon and a coaster, and an offer to top the water up every quarter hour.

Does it cost us? Sure, but it's the right thing to do. We treat all our customers the same, no matter what. Maybe that glass of water, delivered with style and a smile, is the one nice thing that person has experienced that day, that week or that year; maybe that glass of water will one day lead to that customer coming back and ordering a glass of wine, a meal and more.

Treat everyone with respect — except rock stars

In return for making everyone welcome, we ask that our customers treat our staff and venue with respect. I have zero tolerance for anyone in any venue feeling threatened, unsafe or intimidated. Has this policy cost me? Sure — both financially and physically. But it's the right thing to do. I've never forgotten one incident. It was 1995. I was working in a bar called The King's Head in Earls Court in London, the suburb of choice for party-loving Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans. The King's Head was an early version of a sports bar with posters of the Wallabies, All Blacks and Springbok rugby teams plastered all over the timber walls. The place could get pretty wild at night, but being a party-loving, rugby-mad Aussie, I felt right at home.

I was on my day off, just stopping off to pick up some paperwork at the pub and to say hello to the locals. I noticed two men in the front bar. They looked unkempt, unshaven, and were wearing torn, dirty jeans, cursing like crazy and chugging back the beers like there was no tomorrow. One of them stood up, wobbly on his feet, leaned over the bar and started to pour himself a drink. The bar waitress, Sally, an Aussie girl, who I had hired just one week earlier, asked him to stop, but that just set him off. Sally had fingers jabbed in her direction and F-bombs and C-words yelled loudly at her, among other names. I wasn't having that.

I nodded to my boss, Adam, a big Brisbane boy built like a brick shithouse, to prepare for a ‘staged exit' as we called it in the business. He knew what to do. He quietly removed the empty glasses on the bar so they couldn't be used as weapons, and then gave me the signal. I stood up, removed the glasses of beer they were drinking, grabbed them by the scruff of their shabby shirts, hoisted them off their barstools, frog marched them to the door, and threw them out into the alley. They landed hard against the adjoining wall, shocked and confused at this unexpected turn of events, wondering what had happened and what had hit them.

One of my regulars, who watched all this unfold, said, ‘That was a brave move'.

‘Why?' I asked.

‘Do you know who they were?'

‘No.'

‘Only the biggest band in the world right now.'

‘And who would that be?'

‘I believe that was Oasis.'

I just laughed. They might be wondering what wall they hit, but I had no regrets at all about my actions. I might have lost a bit of business that day (they were drinking a lot!) and I may have lost bragging rights for hosting the biggest band in the world in my bar, but their behaviour, language and attitude were way out of line, even by rock-star standards. I don't care who you are or what you do, if you're in my bar you treat everyone with respect. Throwing them out was the right thing to do.

A lot can and does go wrong in a pub, most of which you may not see, thank goodness, but in trying to do the little things right, and do the right things, on a constant basis, you increase your chances of getting the bigger things right too, like making a profit, creating a loyal clientele and building a cool brand.

Mind over matter

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, ‘I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one'.

We're all busy these days and it's tempting to skip important routines that keep us in good working order.

Gandhi knew what many of us are slowly cottoning onto: calming your mind is critical to succeeding in life. Be it sport, business or your personal relationships, responding in the moment is the key to success. You can see it in action on the football field every week. Why is it that the top football players, who've been playing football for decades and can kick a goal from 50 metres out during training, fail to kick a goal in a high-pressure game a few metres out? It's not their foot that causes issues; it's their focus. Their attention has gone to the last umpiring decision that went against them, the voice in the crowd, the voice of the coach or just the voice in their head. When we're under stress, we end up swimming in the oceans of our own mind, with too many thoughts and too many distractions. It's why most major football clubs of all codes (and other sports) now routinely engage mindfulness coaches. They know that the difference between winning and losing is not so much about what's happening on the field — it's what happening in the player's head. Training the mind to perform under pressure is the last frontier and the coaches who realise this know that winning and losing is often all in managing the mind.

It's the same with business. We take knocks all the time — a trusted team member leaves us, a marketing campaign falls flat, a real estate development deal falls over, the government increases a tax — you name it, we've been through it. It's part of being in the game of business. But it's the business owners who can take a deep breath, connect with their higher power and access their inner wisdom who will win out. Meditation is the key to transcending these emotional troughs, keeping perspective and dealing with difficult times.

The benefits of meditation

Having the ability to still the mind, review the situation with a cool head and make decisions from a place of strength, rather than fear, is what meditation can do for a business owner. It can help you ‘buy' a bit of mental preparation time so that when something happens you don't react in the moment, say or do the wrong thing and then live to regret it.

Mindfulness creates the mental space you need — maybe just a few seconds — to see the situation clearly, decide on the best course of action, minimise whatever emotional current is running through your brain and come up with a response that is right for that moment.

The 20/30 rule

We all know the Pareto Principle — 80 per cent of anything comes from 20 per cent of effort. When it comes to setting yourself up for a productive day, I have an adjustment to that concept. I call it the 20/30 rule and it's all about the morning ritual. I truly believe most days end badly because they start badly. Don't make that rookie mistake. One of my favourite authors is Robin Sharma, author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. His book The 5AM Club shows why the morning ritual is so important, and I couldn't agree more.

Here's how I structure my morning ritual upon waking:

• 20 minutes planning
• 30 minutes reading
• 20 minutes meditation
• 30 minutes weights
• 20 minutes ice bath (I set my swimming pool temperature to eight degrees to create ‘ice bath' conditions. When I didn't have a swimming pool, I just had a really cold bath or shower.)
• 30 minutes sauna.

Yes, it's 150 minutes, which may seem a lot of time to dedicate to a morning ritual, especially if you've got a young family and a bustling household. But out of the 1440 minutes we get every day, surely dedicating 10 per cent of your time to setting the day up right is a good use of it. As Gandhi asserted, the busier you are, the more time you need to centre yourself to stay strong.

Meditation has been my ‘go to' secret weapon for many years now. My morning ritual is fixed and only an emergency or an inconvenient travel schedule can throw me off. Sure, it's a big hit of time out of my day, but on the days I don't do it, the day invariably goes poorly. Call me superstitious (I'm not) but I know that the way I start the day tends to inform how I finish the day.

Mechanics of the mind

If your car isn't working, you take it to the mechanic. Our minds are no different. If we're not feeling great in the head, and meditation isn't helping, we need to take ourselves to a ‘mechanic of the mind': a psychologist, psychiatrist, GP or social worker.

I take my mental health seriously. After a serious family crisis involving my oldest daughter, Holly, I knew that I was careering dangerously off course and I could feel a train wreck coming on. I could have soldiered on and pushed through, trying to deal with it myself, but I knew the pressure was taking hold and I could not see a solution. With the help of my wife Fidelma, who was a senior nurse unit manager of a private psychiatric clinic, we found a counsellor. I met with the counsellor on a number of occasions and found her advice to be invaluable. The experience was so helpful, I took the whole family to see her because we all needed help; we all needed to heal from the trauma Holly experienced. It was a wise decision because it gave us the tools we needed to heal. We still go every couple of years as a family; it's a way of ‘taking the temperature' and we're a stronger, more close-knit family for it.

What I've also come to appreciate is that my children now know that seeing a counsellor is not something to be embarrassed about but something to move towards. Just as we aren't embarrassed to take our car to the motor mechanic, we shouldn't be embarrassed to take ourselves to the mind mechanic.

Help staff help themselves

The days of ‘command and control' as a management strategy are well and truly over. If we employ staff and want to give them autonomy to make important decisions, we can't be second guessing them every step of the way. Sure, they'll make mistakes, but that's part and parcel of being a business owner. I want to give my team a tool for helping them be more resilient so they can weather the various crises that will come their way. We know that anxiety and depression are on the rise and even the seemingly most well-adjusted people (myself included) can be susceptible to mental health issues. It's predicted that by 2025 it will affect over 25 per cent of Australians. That's a hefty number. Look around your family. If there are more than four people in it, one of you is likely to be part of that statistic.

My staff are an extension of my family so I've created an initiative called the Employment Assistance Program (EAP). We fund our staff to attend up to three visits to a counsellor of their choice so that if they're feeling lacklustre or down, they can get the help they need at no cost to them. They can also do it on work time. If you help them help themselves, you'll generally find that when the chips are down, they'll help you too.