Macquarie Law Group principal Mr Tabchouri has always had a strong work ethic, since he took up part-time jobs in his early teens. Many of those jobs, he told Lawyers Weekly, were physically and emotionally gruelling, such as working in a fruit shop from 5:00am until the evening.

As tough as such early gigs were, however, there were important lessons to take from these experiences, he surmised, including and especially the value of doing all one can to ensure a business thrives.

Speaking earlier this week on The Boutique Lawyer Show, Mr Tabchouri said one of the best things he gleaned from his younger life was that “you’ve got to put in a day’s work”.

“I have seven lawyers that work for me, and if I really wanted to, I could take half the day off, but I believe that for your business to be successful, and for you to be successful, you do have to put work in and you have to turn up in the morning,” he posited.

“I’m in court most days of the year – in fact I could count on one hand the amount of times that I don’t start off my day by going to court – but I found that even if I have downtime that I still will turn up to the office at 8:30am and not think that I could take the morning off.”

Discipline, Mr Tabchouri argued, is inextricably linked to the success of a small business like a law firm.

“I’ve seen people who have successful businesses who still turn up to work every day, who are still there on the coalface, who are steering the ship. You have to do that, because if you don’t, the success that you’ve gained will often disappear,” he warned.

“In the criminal law game, clients ring you all the time and they expect you to answer your phone. If you don’t answer your phone – and I say this to my own staff – they’ll ring someone else.

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“With current clients, you can train them to SMS you and send you messages to manage it. But as far as new clients go, you have to answer your phone. That means, for me, answering at 2:00am, 11:00pm at night, and getting up early. It’s one of those industries where I say to my staff, it’s a vocation, it’s not a job, and with a vocation comes that extra time and effort that you can normally get away with in another job.”

This all said, Mr Tabchouri is fully cognisant of the fundamental importance of holistic wellbeing.

“Physical wellness is your starting point, I believe. My day starts at 5:30am and I’ll go to the gym or I’ll go for a walk with a friend. I’ve found that it allows me to really have that commitment to my work, in what some would call an onerous fashion,” he submitted.

“But I strive to be the hardest working person in my office, and my staff say to me that they believe I’m the hardest working person in the office. If I can do that, and show that there is a balance, then it allows people to follow that lead and go in the right way.”

The health aspect is critical for showcasing balance and work ethic, he stressed.

“I’ve got young children, my daughters are going to turn five and three, so I decided I need to be there for them and play the long game as one would have it. I took it upon myself to give up smoking and start training. I lost a lot of weight that I put on in my late thirties and early forties, and that set an example through the office, so now everyone seems to be training, it’s quite interesting,” he deduced.

“It’s about really making an effort to make it so that you can balance your life, you have to work at it.”

To listen to the full conversation with Elias Tabchouri, click below: